[Lazarus] filesystem timing Linux vs Win [was: [Re: I desperately need some ideas of reducing edit, compile, debug cycle]]

[Martin]

On 27/11/2010 15:24, Max Vlasov wrote:
>
> Sven, it all really matters, but on modern computers with enough 
> memory installed all these hd-related difference become irrelevant on 
> the next usage of the same files/executables/dlls, since they all go 
> to the system cache. Lazarus IDE starts in less than a second on my 
> win7 notebook after the first run/exit.

While some of the post was about process startup times (which depend on 
more than just HD times), there are things about HD access times, that 
do matter. I do not know how much they affect the compiler, but...

An example: Somewhere in the last 12 month there was an issue in 
Lazarus, where the IDE would be unresponsive for several second 
(sometimes 10 to 15 seconds). Very annoying if you are in the process of 
editing something.

The reason was that the IDE would check the last-modification-times of 
all dependency files on disk (several 1000, maybe 10000 files).
Calling the system to ask for the last-modification time that often 
(even with all/most data cached by the OS) would take that long on 
Windows, while under Linux it wouldn't even take a single second...

Similar issues can affect compilation times too.

Martin