DeSmet C and RAM Discs

[Jay Freeman]

[ The line-eater LOVES discussions of programming style ... ]

In article <11587 at brl-tgr.ARPA> jpm at BNL44.ARPA (John McNamee) writes:

>The DeSmet package is excellent if you only need a small model compiler.

I agree.  I've written about 20000 lines of C with it and am well pleased.

>I put the compiler temporary files on RAM disk, and it seems that 90% of
>the compile time is spent loading the compiler and source text off disk.

I have a CP/M-86 machine with half a megabyte of RAM disc, and DeSmet
version 2.41.  That's space enough for editor, compiler, linker, temporary
files, object files, and even lots of source code if I feel like living
dangerously.  It is blindingly fast.

>If I had the memory to put the whole compiler/linker/library on RAM disk,
>I bet it would compile and link 50K source programs in under 30 seconds.
>I should also point out that Desmet includes an editor that is fantastic.
>It isn't EMACS, but it is fast and well suited to editing source code.

The last time I looked, it could only have one file open at once.  With
separately compiled stuff, you often need many.

>"Turbo C" for Borland will not be able to touch this package unless Borland
>includes a good linking method. Remember that Turbo Pascal is based around
>idea of one source file for the entire program (I guess they have something
>like #include, but I don't think that counts). Borland has yet to prove they
>can produce a system as fast as Turbo Pascal when separate compilation is
>needed.

    I'm not impressed with Turbo Pascal
    With RAM disc everything runs like h*ll ...

                                  :-)
-- 
Jay Reynolds Freeman (Schlumberger Palo Alto Research)(canonical disclaimer)