Lots of C++ header files if memory serves me right, that all have a habit of depending on each other (meaning incremental compilation/cached compilation can break rather easily), which was IIRC compounded by use of templates, which are used to create even more header files.
C++ headers have O(n^2) loading complexity due to some weird things in the specification of the language, so the more you have, the messier it gets.
It's said that you ship your org chart, and Chromium is no exception. It's just not a problem for Google since their computer scale is "yes", not "a customer grade laptop".
It is funny how C++ programmers have been recruited and asked about complexity and big-O notation and then they end up with a build system that is wholly against the gospel.
I know that it is a result of years of development not necessarily a fault of any regular dev, an amalgam of decisions from the long time ago and yada yada, but it doesn't make it less funny.
Damn, I remember when I ran Gentoo for a while in ~2010 or so, all three of those took multiple hours to build. And that was on a Q6600 with 2GB of RAM, which was I think a reasonable spec machine for the time.
Glad LibreOffice and Firefox have got the times down since then.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the extensive use of modern C++ features was also a factor.
But also, google’s massive build farm does not incentivise optimising the build process, I’m assuming most google engineers have long given up building locally entirely (if they ever bothered).
I can see it at $dayjob, peeps are very happy to tell you that you just need to parallelise the CI more, nobody’s interested in profiling and optimising the build or test suites.
WilhelmVonWeiner | a day ago
Very informative article. Ridiculous behaviour from that one user, glad the maintainer put his mental first and said fuck it.
SamRW | 12 hours ago
Agreed, that kind of language is unacceptable when one is talking to a volunteer and additionally one is not willing to contribute in any way.
pyfisch | 17 hours ago
From the comments:
Why is Chromium so extremely slow to build? It's not like Chromium has 10x the features of Firefox.
noirscape | 10 hours ago
Lots of C++ header files if memory serves me right, that all have a habit of depending on each other (meaning incremental compilation/cached compilation can break rather easily), which was IIRC compounded by use of templates, which are used to create even more header files.
C++ headers have
O(n^2)loading complexity due to some weird things in the specification of the language, so the more you have, the messier it gets.It's said that you ship your org chart, and Chromium is no exception. It's just not a problem for Google since their computer scale is "yes", not "a customer grade laptop".
hawski | 6 hours ago
It is funny how C++ programmers have been recruited and asked about complexity and big-O notation and then they end up with a build system that is wholly against the gospel.
I know that it is a result of years of development not necessarily a fault of any regular dev, an amalgam of decisions from the long time ago and yada yada, but it doesn't make it less funny.
classichasclass | 15 hours ago
Firefox definitely builds quicker, but 10 minutes seems abnormally fast. 64 threads at -j24 on my POWER9 was around 20 minutes.
cyberia | 10 hours ago
Damn, I remember when I ran Gentoo for a while in ~2010 or so, all three of those took multiple hours to build. And that was on a Q6600 with 2GB of RAM, which was I think a reasonable spec machine for the time.
Glad LibreOffice and Firefox have got the times down since then.
mhd | 16 hours ago
Vendored dependencies?
masklinn | 11 hours ago
I wouldn’t be surprised if the extensive use of modern C++ features was also a factor.
But also, google’s massive build farm does not incentivise optimising the build process, I’m assuming most google engineers have long given up building locally entirely (if they ever bothered).
I can see it at $dayjob, peeps are very happy to tell you that you just need to parallelise the CI more, nobody’s interested in profiling and optimising the build or test suites.
johnklos | 2 hours ago
Perhaps Gentoo should adopt NetBSD pkgsrc's chromium package so that they can compile from source while spending much less energy on maintenance.
That helps with the symptom. The real problem is Google, which has no incentive to make things portable and maintainable.