Goodbye Slow Configuration: Parallelizing Build Configuration with Makefiles
Author Tavian Barnes complains about the inefficiency of existing build systems (Autoconf, CMake, Meson, etc.) in the configuration phase, which takes far longer than the build phase. He proposes a parallelized solution based on Makefiles, significantly improving efficiency by breaking down the configuration process into multiple concurrently executable tasks. The core idea is to leverage make's parallel capabilities to parallelize the originally sequential compiler test tasks, ultimately reducing configuration time from 38 seconds to 0.4 seconds. The article details the implementation, including helper scripts, Makefile writing techniques, and parallelization strategies. This article is valuable for developers seeking faster build speeds.
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