Reducing Compilation Time by a Compilation Server

In language systems that support separate compilation, we often observe that header files are internalized over and over again when the source files that depend on them are compiled. Making a compiler a long-lived server eliminates such redundant processing of header files, thus reducing the compilation time. The paper first describes compilation servers for C-family languages in general, and then a compilation server for our C-based object-oriented language in particular. The performance results of our server show that a compilation server can substantially shorten the compilation time.