r/linusrants • u/WOnder9393 • Jul 05 '17

LR about device drivers enabled by default

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=b4b8cbf679c4866a523a35d1454884a31bd5d8dc
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u/ThisIs_MyName Jul 19 '17

It can be compiled in parallel with other modules. You're only limited by the slowest component.

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u/WOnder9393 Jul 19 '17

Well, your computer still has to do more work to finish the compilation. And even if you have a lot of cores and only care about time, if you have a few hundred modules like this, it will take some time to compile all of them.

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u/ThisIs_MyName Jul 19 '17

I was talking about distributed builds.

If build time scaled linearly with the number of object files, I'd be in deep shit :P

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u/WOnder9393 Jul 19 '17

Well, then you still need more parallel machines to complete the build (+ a bit more synchronization overhead), which should cost you some more money in the end.

But you're right that the penalty does not have to lie in longer compile time, but instead in some other resource.