[fpc-devel] Re: Statistics on compiling the Free Pascal compiler for Win32

[Paul Robinson]

 Sven Barth writes:


> We also use a different name, as "testpp.exe" can not be overriden while it's running.

Sometimes I'm stupid!  I can't believe I forgot that.  (Oh yes, I can believe it; I've made stupido mistakes before.)  But the original run was just a test, and basically I was blown away by a compiler that is "fast enough" to compile itself in 14 seconds, despite the fact that it's compiling a huge, rich application of more than a quarter of a million lines.

I mean, I have a nice machine - a 64-bit uniprocessor with 3gig of memory and 2tb of disk space is not exactly limping along - but it's not "bleeding edge."   Although I think about the fact that at my school circa 1978 we ran an IBM 360 clone mainframe - a Univac 90/60 - which had 500K of memory and 100 meg of disk space for a city college that had probably 5000 students, 300 of which were probably in IT, and did pretty well, kind of amazes me to think how far we've come in a little over 30 years.  

And the only Pascal compilers back then were Standard Pascal.  Mark/Release (meaning the programmer has to manage memory and garbage collection themselves), in fact one of the reference manuals said that using dispose might cause problems or wasn't implemented, I can't remember which), sequential files only, no units, objects, classes or anything else we've developed for increasing what high-level languages can do now.