[HN Gopher] Speeding up autoconf with caching (2022)
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       Speeding up autoconf with caching (2022)
        
       Author : jmmv
       Score  : 22 points
       Date   : 2024-04-04 05:04 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (jmmv.dev)
 (TXT) w3m dump (jmmv.dev)
        
       | BobbyTables2 wrote:
       | Maybe the next backdoor can be in a prepopulated cache file
       | instead of the autoconf script!
        
       | malkia wrote:
       | CMake does not fare better either!
        
         | ahartmetz wrote:
         | IME, it does. It takes 1-2 seconds for small projects and under
         | 20 for most large ones.
        
           | plorkyeran wrote:
           | I've unfortunately encountered cmake projects which take
           | upwards of a minute to configure. It has a faster baseline
           | but it can't stop you from writing slow checks.
        
       | sirwhinesalot wrote:
       | There's a way to make autoconf infinitely faster: get rid of it.
       | CMake is a lot better, but still terrible, get rid of it too
       | while you're at it.
        
         | anonymous_union wrote:
         | pkg-config seems like all you need these days
        
       | hinkley wrote:
       | Never confuse caching with precalculation. Caches can go away
       | while being used, or show up too late, leading to strange timing
       | and shared state issues. A precalculated list is static. It is a
       | knowable quantity.
       | 
       | It's very much like the DRY problem where you take two pieces of
       | similarly shaped code with different purposes and merge them,
       | creating problems later on. They look the same, but they exist
       | for very different reasons and do not conflate them.
       | 
       | If there's a set of questions that most configure calls are bound
       | to make, you can work those out at first run or install time.
       | Install time gets weird with system and hardware upgrades.
        
       | donio wrote:
       | I could have sworn that config.cache used to be on by default.
       | And indeed it was until autoconf-2.50 which was released in 2001.
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | Interesting; do you know / did they document why it was
         | disabled?
        
       | rolandog wrote:
       | Thanks for sharing. I've been meaning to learn to use autoconf;
       | autoconf caching and your autoswc tool seem really useful!
        
       | thedumbname wrote:
       | They not yet discovered Site Defaults and config.site
        
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       (page generated 2024-04-05 23:02 UTC)