Henry Vermaak schrieb:
I'm trying to ascertain if this is even possible (the c-style, file-at-a-time compilation, using make to handle multiple processes). Do you think it's possible, then?
Yes and no. It would mean to create kind of header files for the Pascal units, usable to compile the units independently. No problem at a first glance, the Interface is the equivalent of an C header file, and the Uses lists are equivalent to further #includes. One of the remaining problems are the lost unit qualifiers, so that external references in the object files cannot be safely resolved.
But in fact above is what FPC already does! When it encounters a Uses list, it loads the according PPU or, if not available or outdated, compiles the requested unit. Thus the PPU files already *are* the equivalent of the C header files. Plus the bonus that every "header" has to be loaded only once, not for every single module to be compiled by an C compiler.
The problem IMO is the long list of units waiting for their dependencies loaded, before the first unit can be compiled at all (top-down). More efficient were bottom-up compilation, starting with the units with only few dependencies, so that compilation could start while the disk is stressed by loading all other PPU files, required for the compilation of units with more dependencies.
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