[flashrom] [PATCH] Autodetect target processor architecture

Peter Lemenkov lemenkov at gmail.com
Thu Jun 30 21:03:12 CEST 2011


2011/6/30 Carl-Daniel Hailfinger <c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006 at gmx.net>:

> Using autoconf would imply at least a fourfold increase in compile time,

Does anybody cares? Ok, anyway, we don't need to guess - let's count:

work ~/work/flashrom (git::fedora-next): time autoreconf -if

real    0m3.911s
user    0m2.231s
sys     0m0.244s
work ~/work/flashrom (git::fedora-next):

This would be run very occasionally, so I wouldn't bother about
autoreconf invocation - just for the record. Running ./configure is
more frequent operation but it also requires only when we change
something in configure.ac and Makefile.am:

work ~/work/flashrom (git::fedora-next): time ./configure 2>&1 > /dev/null

real    0m5.572s
user    0m2.202s
sys     0m1.674s
work ~/work/flashrom (git::fedora-next):

And now, the most frequent (but not the last) operation:

work ~/work/flashrom (git::fedora-next): time make 2>&1 > /dev/null

real    0m4.922s
user    0m4.072s
sys     0m0.927s
work ~/work/flashrom (git::fedora-next):

Finally, let's install the resulting binary:

work ~/work/flashrom (git::fedora-next): time make install
DESTDIR=/var/tmp/flashrom-autotools 2>&1 > /dev/null

real    0m0.160s
user    0m0.091s
sys     0m0.054s
work ~/work/flashrom (git::fedora-next):

Now, let's compare with the current buildsystem. Firstly, we will run
"configure + make" target:

work ~/work/flashrom (git::master): time make 2>&1 > /dev/null

real    0m5.385s
user    0m4.282s
sys     0m1.157s
work ~/work/flashrom (git::master):

I'd say it two times faster (assuming that we'll run ./configure every
time we using autotools - and we won't). And lets try to install:

work ~/work/flashrom (git::master): time make install
DESTDIR=/var/tmp/flashrom-custem 2>&1 > /dev/null

real    0m0.494s
user    0m0.295s
sys     0m0.188s
work ~/work/flashrom (git::master):

Still (in)significantly fast but anyway - three times slower :).

> To even consider autotools at all, two basic requirements must be met:
> - Zero compile time increase (that includes the configure step in a
> pristine tree).
> - Total lines of code to be maintained do not increase either.

Yes. LOC number is significatly lower in case of autotools and
handmade Makefile:

sulaco ~/work/flashrom (git::fedora-next): LANG=C wc -l configure.ac
Makefile.am && wc -l Makefile
  241 configure.ac
  186 Makefile.am
  427 total
523 Makefile
sulaco ~/work/flashrom (git::fedora-next):

And there are some cleanups in the sources as well which I didn't
count. So I can answer with confidence - the number of LOCs will be
less than now and the compile time will be almost the same (difference
in 5 seconds).

The CMake-based buildsystem however has one major drawback - it
requires cmake to be installed (aototools requires themselves only for
reconfiguration). And keeping in mind that different major CMake
versions have major incompatibilities I'd rather say that it's better
not to use it at all - it adds more issues than fixes them. I can say
it for sure because I've got very interesting experience of
maintaining compatibility of CMake-based buildsystem for relatively
large project among three major CMake branches - 2.4, 2.6 and 2.8.
-- 
With best regards, Peter Lemenkov.




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