Docs: recommend adding redo-ifchange with a lot of targets at a time.

Some people don't know to do this, and their scripts are unnecessarily slow
because of it.
This commit is contained in:
Avery Pennarun 2011-05-08 04:25:51 -04:00
commit 656c3c583c
2 changed files with 49 additions and 2 deletions

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@ -38,7 +38,7 @@ redo-ifchange returns only after all the given
*targets* are known to be up to date. *targets* are known to be up to date.
# TIP # TIP 1
You don't have to run redo-ifchange *before* generating You don't have to run redo-ifchange *before* generating
your target; you can generate your target first, then your target; you can generate your target first, then
@ -60,6 +60,24 @@ requires that you declare all your dependencies before
running the target build commands. running the target build commands.
# TIP 2
Try to list as many dependencies as possible in a single
call to redo-ifchange. Every time you run redo-ifchange,
the shell has to fork+exec it, which takes time. Plus redo
can only parallelize your build if you give it multiple
targets to build at once. It's fine to have a couple of
separate redo-ifchange invocations for a particular target
when necessary (as in TIP 1 above), but try to keep it to a
minimum. For example here's a trick for generating a list
of targets, but redo-ifchanging them all at once:
for d in *.c; do
echo ${d%.c}.o
done |
xargs redo-ifchange
# REDO # REDO
Part of the `redo`(1) suite. Part of the `redo`(1) suite.

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@ -269,7 +269,7 @@ instead. Since you didn't `redo-ifchange default.od`,
changes to default.od won't cause everything to rebuild. changes to default.od won't cause everything to rebuild.
# Can I set my dircolors to highlight .do files? # Can I set my dircolors to highlight .do files in ls output?
Yes! At first, having a bunch of .do files in each Yes! At first, having a bunch of .do files in each
directory feels like a bit of a nuisance, but once you get directory feels like a bit of a nuisance, but once you get
@ -518,6 +518,35 @@ It is almost certainly possible to do it much more nicely
than I have, so if you do, please send it in! than I have, so if you do, please send it in!
# Is it better to run redo-ifchange once per dependency or just once?
The obvious way to write a list of dependencies might be
something like this:
for d in *.c; do
redo-ifchange ${d%.c}.o
done
But it turns out that's very non-optimal. First of all, it
forces all your dependencies to be built in order
(redo-ifchange doesn't return until it has finished
building), which makes -j parallelism a lot less useful.
And secondly, it forks and execs redo-ifchange over and
over, which can waste CPU time unnecessarily.
A better way is something like this:
for d in *.c; do
echo ${d%.c}.o
done |
xargs redo-ifchange
That only runs redo-ifchange once (or maybe a few times, if
there are really a *lot* of dependencies and xargs has to
split it up), which saves fork/exec time and allows for
parallelism.
# If a target didn't change, how do I prevent dependents from being rebuilt? # If a target didn't change, how do I prevent dependents from being rebuilt?
For example, running ./configure creates a bunch of files including For example, running ./configure creates a bunch of files including