On Tue, 14 Jan 2014, Alexander Holler wrote:
I just was curious if there was some progress on that topic besides what Ralf Wildenhues seemed to have tried out.
The most challenging aspect is because configure scripts have a huge amount of dependencies (e.g. shell variable definitions) which only work due to the sequential nature of the script. In order to parallize configure, one would need to somehow assure that results are available in the correct order. Such logic is normal in make files but not in shell scripts.
Part of configure scripts is written by the developers of a package and not from Autoconf and Autoconf has no way to predict the behavior of code which is outside of its control.
Regardless, configure scripts are not actually the main problem with package build times on modern hardware. The main problem is that most free software packages are not constructed correctly so that they can take advantage of parallel builds.
Bob -- Bob Friesenhahn bfriesen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/ GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/ _______________________________________________ Autoconf mailing list Autoconf@xxxxxxx https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/autoconf
