Re: pkgsrc speed

["Johnny C. Lam" <jlam%pkgsrc.org@localhost>]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2007 at 11:35:20PM +0200, Julio M. Merino Vidal wrote:
> 
> I timed how long it took to build gtk2 by running 'make' inside the  
> pkgsrc's directory.  This was *after* I had ran 'make patch' (I now  
> realize I should have ran 'make wrapper' or something like that, but  
> can't try it now and the results shouldn't be too different).  The  
> timings I got are:
> 
> real 46m40.899s user 32m.52.636s sys 12m54.547s
> 
> Then I tried the same build (configure+make) without pkgsrc.  I used  
> the same patches present in pkgsrc for the test.  The results:
> 
> real 32m25.393s user 19m37.271s sys 12m12.282s
> 
> There difference is almost 15 minutes!  Is that normal?  Or am I OK  
> in thinking that the wrappers in pkgsrc really slow down things that  
> much?  (Not blaming anyone, just trying to see what's the cause.)

Once we get to the build stage, almost all the time is taken up by
the build and the wrappers, so I think it's accurate to say that the
wrappers cause a lot of the measured slowdown.

The wrappers were initially a lot lighter in their first incarnation,
but they grown heftier as they've needed to handle more things over
the years.  Rewriting them to be more efficient as well as generally
nicer to look at is high on my list of things to do, especially since
I need them for a separate project that I'm working on (I think you
can guess which one ;-)

        Cheers,

        -- Johnny Lam <jlam%pkgsrc.org@localhost>