Page 1 of 1

Windows make time very slow

Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2017 12:16 pm
by js1234
Hello,

the make - process is very slow in the msys environment in Windows. I think it is because it uses fork() which is not available in windows, and the emulation takes very long.

I know the alternative of using a virtual machine but does anyone have any workarounds to make it faster on Windows?

Thanks

Re: Windows make time very slow

Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2017 8:35 pm
by WiFive
Have you tried parallel jobs make -j5

Re: Windows make time very slow

Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2017 11:23 pm
by ESP_Angus
As it happens, yesterday (git revision 16ef01d) some fixes were merged to the master branch improving Windows support, which includes a speed boost. Turns out running 'git submodule status' on Windows/MSYS2 is very slow, and the old build process ran this command multiple times each time 'make' was invoked.

Windows is still slower than Linux & OSX, I think fork() is a major reason for that. But since 16ef01d it should be less painfully slow. :)

As suggested, running parallel make (-j) also makes a big difference (across all platforms) if you have more than one CPU.

Angus