webkit-gtk took so long to compile?

[truongan]

Well I don't know if this is normal or not but it struck me how come a package only 7MB in size took over 3 hours to compile. My computer can compile larger package (in size) in a more timely manner. Firefox worth 70MB of download but took only 1 hour to compile. Does webkit-gtk took that long for you guys as well? May be you guys could take a look at my emerge --info to notice if there is anything wrong?

[The Unabeefer]

I don't know if it takes 3 hours or not... but it does take quite a while for me. Whenever I see webkit-gtk, I normally wait to update until I am in bed asleep because it takes so long.

So if there's something wrong on your end, there probably is on my end. OR, it just takes that long for everyone.
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[ulenrich]

change c(xx)flags from
"-O2" to "-O0"
and use gcc-4.6.3 instead of previous compilers in case you havent already. This will fasten your compiles!

[Gusar]

There's a bug in webkit-gtk's build system, so make -j1 is used to compile it. That's why it takes so long. Edit: Actually, the bug seems to be in GNU make . Either way, this is the reason for the long compile.

[salahx]

[Hypnos]

C++ code making extensive use of templates and smart pointers, as WebKit does, takes a long time to compile.

I'm not expert enough in compiler technology to explain why exactly, other than the complexity involved in shoehorning generics and "pseudo"-dynamic memory technology into a static-binding language. Objective-C has a similar feature set but compiles much, much, much faster because it is dynamic binding.
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[broken_chaos]

It's pretty big. Seems my average is around 2 hours on my netbook (dual core, 64-bit, hyper-threaded Atom).

If you haven't already, be sure to put /var/tmp/portage on a big tmpfs (most things compile with 1G of tmpfs -- occasionally something with need more space, like gcc).

[truongan]

[Gusar]

The latest version (1.8.1-r201 and 1.8.1-r301) contain a hack to allow parallel building.

[Angrychile]

[Rion]

looks like it compiles already 5 or so hours on ramdisk. i7-3610QM
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[jochenf]

Bad enough that it takes so long, but it will install TWO versions of webkit-gtk (2.4.4 and 2.6.1) on a fresh installation with "emerge gnome firefox".
My pc is now compiling since 18 hours for gnome and firefox, and no end in sight.

[Velnias75]

Just my two cents:

• According to the build log dependency tracking seems to be enabled. This may could be fixed easily by the ebuild maintainers by adding

  Code:

  --disable-dependency-tracking

  to the configure call
  
• there are tons of surely unneccesary search include paths, but that may be a task for upstream

I started my build 8 p.m. last evening, letting it run all the night and currently (9.45 a.m.) it continues to build, but in a virtual machine which has been suspended around 1 hour because I needed my PC for other tasks.

[sbdmmg]

Just my two cents:
the compilation of

[Velnias75]

Tip: since one night wasn't enough to compile I used

[ballsystemlord]

Hmm, I was about to ask the same question, I have webkit 2.4.8 and then I also need to compile another version, webkit-gtk 2.4.8 r200. I've got make 4.0-r1 and gcc 4.8.3.
It takes 3.5 hours for one and 4.3 for the other (I don't remember which is which). I'm also most curious about this.
Maybe I'll write the devs...
Not that I'm an expert, but if you actually take the time to watch it it includes lots of various headers... this will slow down compilation, so this is at least part of the problem.

[ballsystemlord]

I've done the research, here are the resaults:
The devs agnolage that it take a while to compile but higher then 3.5 hours is unreasonable so you might want to see whats going on unless you have a really slow box. As for me, I descovered that for many, but not all packages, my MAKE_OPTS setting ignored. webkit-gtk builds in a single threaded enviroment as does php and several others (I have not made a list). This is probablty a topic for another thread though so I, or you, might consider starting one.

[svartulf]

Build on my laptop (AMD x86_64, 4GB RAM, /var/tmp on SSD) has taken >8hr for the past couple nights (had forgot about FEATURES=keepwork - been shutting the box down in the morning to take it to work). I seem to recall a warning about parallel builds (-jN make option, where N > 1) - some packages are sensitive to sequencing and there can be issues during compilation/linking so that's disabled in some cases. Perhaps webkit has that problem.

But what about a binary release? LibreOffice has a binary version because it takes ages to build. I'm not doing anything special with use flags and would be fine with doing a binary install rather than getting that sinking feeling I get when I see webkit in my `emerge -pv' output.

[ballsystemlord]

My mistake, when I first set MAKE_OPTS I put an _ in there and it does not belong (everyone check your spelling). I'm shocked that emerge and portage missed this invalid variable.
If you want to know a better way to enter in these values I recommend using nano and then hitting ^R (read file), select ^X (execute command), and type into the bar
man make.conf } grep (put the variable name in question here)
You can then edit out any additional text that grep brought in and save the file.

[lavacano]

FWIW from http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/x/webkitgtk2.html

[kernelOfTruth]

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=546336

[Eusaphious]

[rudregues]

Build time yet sucks for this package...
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[kernelOfTruth]

@Eusaphious:

no you can't !

you only can because you already compiled it before

without that you don't know.


Those SBU units would be nice - e.g. webkit-gtk compared to firefox with USE-flags X, Y, Z (without dependencies building),

etc. etc.

[ISHAIM]

This isn't a problem confined to Gentoo, per se, but across the board it seems as WebKit maintainers know this: https://trac.webkit.org/wiki/WebKitGTK/SpeedUpBuild

I wonder what the potential is for a binary release? It doesn't seem like this would only be a problem for Gentoo users. You would think it would make webkit-gtk maintenance a pain in and of itself. Come to think of that, I almost feel sorry for the maintainers if they have to deal with this, too. Probably they've got some decent processing power in-house, but still, that spells trouble for the way open-source works, with developers with limited hardware constraints trying to contribute. Who knows?

After Googling "webkit build time", meeting minutes from April 2011: http://trac.webkit.org/wiki/April%202011%20Meeting/Getting%20compile%20time%20under%20control
so they have known about this since then.

WebKit maintainers are the ones who have to provide a downloadable binary, just like libreoffice-bin and firefox-bin, AFAIK.
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