Looking for speed increases in "make index" and pkg_version for ports

[David Naylor]

On Monday 28 May 2007 03:43, you wrote:
> Maybe I should look at the inner workings of cmake and gmake.  Maybe
> they have some good ideas.  However having looked through the source
> code of make, and also looking at the cvs logs, it does seem to be well
> written.  The only possibility I see of making it go a lot faster is a
> complete redesign, e.g. my just in time idea for processing variables.
>
> Stephen

Just in time (jit), if I remember correctly, is a term used by java 
interpreters which compile the byte code into machine code!!!  Perhaps this 
could be developed for makefile's, especially bsd.*.mk.  

This, I think, could be done in two ways:
1) Develop the bsd.*.mk files in C and link it in with make, or
2) Use the makefiles as source to compile into machine code (passibly via 
C->ASM).  The machine code could be created on demand, or cached and only 
updated if the source makefile changes.  

I am not sure if this could work or even if it will have any significant speed 
increase.  However if method 2 does work it has the potential to radically 
increase the speed of ports _while_ maintaining the flexability.  

All that will be needed is an API for the machine code and a compiler???

David
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