Re: NetBSD 10.1 vs 9.4 x86 stability and gcc ICE

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

Michael Cheponis <michael.cheponis%gmail.com@localhost> writes:

>> I'm not saying a 2 GB is unusable -- just that building a lot of software
> takes a lot of RAM.
>
> Why is this?  Generally, big programs are made up of many smaller modules;
> seems to me, if you can compile the largest of the modules, you should be
> able to compile the rest (of the smaller modules). esp with MAKE_JOBS=1
>
> Divide and Conquer ?
>
> (Apologies for asking a dumb question!)

Not a dumb qusetion, but gcc and rustc use enormous RAM especially when
building C++.   node is like that too.   I have trouble building some
things on a 1G RPI3.

If you were to ask "is this intrinsic; could people who build compilers
try harder to make them run in less RAM", the answer is almost certainly
they could, but people who develop such things seem to have big
machines.