216335 - should use incremental linking on Windows

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox Build System :: General, defect)

Description

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

Since the gmake build system landed for Windows, we haven't been doing
incremental linking of dlls, which can (I think) make depend builds a bit
faster.  I have a patch that I think should do this, although I'm probably not
going to be able to test it until Monday.

Comment 1

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

Attachment: patch

not tested yet

Comment 2

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

This cuts the time needed to rebuild nsLayoutModule.obj and gklayout.dll from 26
seconds to 11 seconds for me.  It seems to work just fine.

Comment 3

[cls]

Comment on attachment 129895 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

Does MSVC's incremental linker properly handle the case where you remove files
from the library?

Comment 4

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

I'm not sure.  Was that broken back when we had the nmake build system?

Comment 5

[cls]

I don't know; I avoid nmake whenever possible.  Since release builds were almost
always clobber builds, I don't think anyone bothered to check.

Comment 6

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

cls: per
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/vccore/html/_core_.2f.incremental.asp:

Additionally, LINK performs a full link if any of the following situations occur:
[...]
    * An object (.obj) file is added or omitted.

also... shouldn't this be done for executable files as well?

Comment 7

[cls]

Comment on attachment 129895 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

rs=cls

Comment 8

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

Comment on attachment 129895 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

This patch checked in, 2003-09-16 15:36/44 -0700.

Leaving bug open to look into EXEs.

Comment 9

[Darin Fisher]

I noticed that the build system today seems to delete DLLs before linking them.
 Did something regress?  Is this working as expected?  Given the size of
XUL.DLL, it sure would be nice to leverage incremental linking.

Comment 10

[Darin Fisher]

> I noticed that the build system today seems to delete DLLs before linking them.

Nevermind.  It's late, and I was imagining things.