[fpc-pascal] Progress indication while linking

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Jonas Maebe wrote:

> The ld manual page lists some options you can use to reduce its memory usage:
> * --no-keep-memory (makes it re-read object symbol tables from time to time instead of keeping them in memory all the time)
> * --reduce-memory-overheads (small hash tables and slower but less memory-intensive link map generation algorithm)

I scripted some builds over the afternoon with all combinations of 
those, running on a Linux SPARC system with 192Mb which I was hoping 
would be tight enough to be a good test. Unfortunately the timings on 
all four were very similar: --no-keep-memory (without 
--reduce-memory-overheads) gave about a minute's advantage out of about 
18 minutes link time.

I was hoping that --stats output might show something useful, but I 
think it gets swallowed. Vincent's suggestion of -t shows some useful 
info during the first part of the link, but in the sort of extreme case 
that I've currently got with Solaris I don't know at what point that 
would peter out.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]