Re: cache directory is not removed

[Akim Demaille]

>>>>> "Steven" == Steven G Johnson <address@hidden> writes:

Steven> Bill Wendling wrote:
>> I concur. It is an annoyance. Having a flag (--remove-cache) as
>> mentioned above would be very nice. Having the cache directory is
>> fine, but keeping them there is a pain...

I don't think you realize the impact of using the cache here.  On the
file utils, on my machine, it means that running automake, autoconf
and autoheader is about 1min long.  Remove the cache, it's three
minutes.  Touch all the Makefile.am, i.e., run automake for each
Makefile.am, and you get 1 minute per Makefile.

So, although I find it stupid, I'm ok to provide some --remove-cache.
But I'm definitely against making this the default.  I'm ok to rename
it as .autom4te.cache too, if you find it so ugly.

Steven> I would go further and suggest that perhaps this should be the
Steven> default behavior...probably the vast majority of autoconf
Steven> users are more annoyed by the generated files lying around
Steven> than they are by an extra three seconds on the rare occasions
Steven> they run autoconf.  

They don't have understood the point.  And then, why keep the .o too?
And the .deps?


Steven> And the time penalty will drop over time as computers get
Steven> faster (unless Akim bloats autom4te to compensate :-).

There are some bottlenecks in M4 (we are asking more services than it
provides now, such as the call stack).  The day this is C code instead
of M4 code, we can raise this issue again.  Meanwhile, given the
figures, it's absolutely not possible to get rid of the cache.