Re: [Vala] plans to speed up compilation

[Adam Dingle <adam yorba org>]

On 05/21/2010 07:50 AM, Sandino Flores Moreno wrote:
> Something you could try, is separating logically related modules, and
> generate .vapi file with its corresponding .a file (static library).
>
> That way, if you modify one of those modules, only the vala files
> in that logical group would be recompiled.
>
> This approach is easily implemented with autotools.
>
> Here is an example:
> http://github.com/tigrux/omap-media-apps/blob/master/common/Makefile.am
>
> That makefile is for an static library that isolates code that all the
> applications
> of my project need to use. So, If I modify an individual file of one
> of the programs
> (let say the player-app) only the files in that directory will me
> compiled, not the whole
> project.
>
> - Sandino
>    

That's an interesting suggestion.  It had already occurred to me that we 
might be able to improve compilation speed by partitioning our program 
into several dynamically linked modules (i.e. plugins).  But as you 
pointed out we could alternatively partition into several *statically* 
linked modules and use .vapi files for the interfaces between them.  It 
would certainly be nice to have a speedup that works more automatically, 
but we could potentially use this as a fallback approach if our program 
grows much larger.

adam