Hi Starling, I think you should read this book, "Large-Scale C++ Software Design" by Lakos. And you should also be concerned about having good makefiles, as per this PDF essay "Recursive Make Considered Harmful" by Miller. URL: <http://www.tip.net.au/~millerp/rmch/recu-make-cons-harm.html>. My own rules of thumb: + Every header file should include ONLY the header files that they need. + Every source file should include ONLY the header files that they need. + No header/source file should depend upon a needed header file being included by another header file. After all, someone may change a header's included header to a forward declaration (which I also shy away from). + Every header file should be "complete", such that they are stand-alone compileable. + No (or very few) "uber header files" that includes all header files. + No reliance upon PCH to include everything and the kitchen sink. Very bad practice, in my opinion. + Use generated dependencies in your makefiles. + Use make fragments, which are all make-included into a whole. (Assuming you use GNU make.) + No recursive builds. (Presuming the individual builds otherwise have interdependencies.) These rules mean that you won't "build too much" (waste of time), nor "build too little" (untrustworthy builds, unless done from a clean slate). And you should be able to take advantage of multi CPUs for concurrent builds. --Eljay
