It's true that templates are inherently slow, and there isn't a
ton we can do about that. However, almost every time I compile
the project (hundreds of times per day), the overwhelming
majority of the time, the same templates are being
re-instantiated in exactly the same way. I can't help but wonder
if there were some way to automatically cache templates
instantiations between runs of dmd?
The heavytemplates.d workaround I've used kind of accomplishes
this as a total hack job. However...
- It adds complexity to the build process
- It adds a small overhead of linking in an extra .lib (although
this is dwarfed by the win from no longer rebuilding expensive
templates every build)
- It means that when heavytemplates.d changes, my rebuild is
significantly longer than before since I'm running dmd twice
- It means extra work to implement that we don't want every
developer to do themselves
Am I crazy in wondering about caching template instantiations? I
understand that an incremental build would kind of accomplish
this goal, but that comes with its own set of problems. I can't
help but think that there's some way to make dmd smarter about
not redoing the exact same work build after build, when the
templates and their instantiations only change very rarely.
