[Boost-build] Improving development (edit, build, debug) cycle times

From: K. Noel Belcourt (kbelco_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-02-14 12:07:38

Hi,

In our projects, we find the bjam startup time (the time for the  
first build action to run) can be very lengthy (anywhere from 2-6  
minutes or more, on fast hardware with all source files located on  
local disks).  This is entirely due to the size of our projects, the  
large numbers of files involved, and we accept this.  But one of our  
more common development use cases occurs where a developer repeatedly  
edits the same small number of files, then builds and debugs their  
changes, and then repeats the cycle.  In this development model, the  
developer isn't altering any dependencies so the exact same set of  
files are compiled and linked each time, with no changes to include  
or library paths, or anything.

Because the bjam startup time can be very long and the dependencies  
are not changing, I believe it would be useful to add the ability for  
bjam to write out the build actions to a file that our developers  
could then execute (e.g. as a shell script) to dramatically shorten  
their development cycle times.

Would this capability be useful to the community?

-- Noel