[fpc-devel] FP 2.4 questions

[Mattias Gaertner]

On Wed, 02 Jan 2008 11:34:54 +0100
Michael Schnell <mschnell at lumino.de> wrote:

> 
> > Supposedly ? No, this is not correct. You install once and
> > recompile as much as needed, that's it.
> So you suggest on a future (not too unusual) visual component that
> all testing can be done before having it (or the correct version of
> it) in the visual component palette ?
> 
> Is it possible to "install (and thus recompile) a preliminary version 
> and use the source code of an updated one ?
> 
> So maybe all this is just a question of Lazarus not providing an 
> "install visual component" feature that just includes recompiling
> Lazarus.

I'm not sure what you mean.
When you press 'install' in the package editor, the following happens:
- The IDE calls 'make IDE OPT=-Cn' to compile the IDE (not the
LCL, not any component) without final linking. This is needed for
packages using the IDE sources directly. FPC will only recompile what
has changed.
- IDE compiles all changed packages
- IDE links the new IDE
- IDE restarts

Every step requires some checks. And the first time the OS has to load
a lot of files into its cache, so it can take a lot of time the first
time. After that the IDE rebuilds itself in a few seconds on a recent
machine.
The first step could be omitted when the IDEIntf is good enough. We
could ask on the mailing list if this is already the case. Maybe this
halves the time needed for building.


Mattias