[m-dev.] how to reduce the time consumed by make install

[Terrence Brannon]

Fergus Henderson writes:
 > 
 > As documented in the "Fine-tuning" section of the INSTALL file,

oops. need to read more before diving in.

 > you can use the --disable-most-grades option; that only installs 3 grades.

this is at the ./configure step I assume

 > If you want to install just the default grade, you can do `make install_main'
 > instead of `make install'.

that's the option for a beginner like me.

 > 
 > There's several reasons why the install may be particularly slow on your
 > machine.
 > 
 > (1) I noticed that configure chose grade `none.gc' as the default for your
 >     machine.  For some unknown reason, the asm_fast.gc grade doesn't work,
 >     and so configure decided to use none.gc instead.
 > 
 >     The none.gc grade is probably about a factor of two or three slower
 >     than the asm_fast.gc and hlc.gc grades.  This means that the part of
 >     `make install' where it is installing all the different versions
 >     of the library takes 2 or 3 times as long as usual.
 > 
 >     So it would have been better to use the new hlc.gc grade,
 >     since that is likely to be quite a bit faster than none.gc.
 >     The C files that we ship in the source distribution are only
 >     valid for asm_fast.gc, reg.gc, and none.gc, though.
 >     If you want to build in another grade, you need to
 >     regenerate those C files, which means that you need
 >     have a working Mercury 0.10 compiler already installed.
 >     With the current sources, however, configure will still
 >     choose none.gc rather than hlc.gc even if you do have
 >     a working bootstrap compiler installed.
 > 
 >     You can install in grade hlc.gc by putting the line
 > 
 >     	GRADE = hlc.gc

will do.

 > 
 >     in a file named `Mmake.params' in the top-level directory,
 >     and running the command

this file is empty. so it's ok that the above is the only thing in it?

 > 
 >     	rm -f compiler/*.c profiler/*.c library/*.c browser/*.c
 > 
 >     before doing `make' or `make install'/`make install_main'.
 > 
 > (2) If you post the configure.log and config.log files, then we may be
 >     able to see why asm_fast.gc didn't work, and with a bit of hacking
 >     we may be able to get it working.

I will forego this degree of refinement for the moment. I will go with hlc.gc.

 > 
 > (3) How much RAM do you have?
 >     If you have too little RAM, then the system may be thrashing.

194 megabytes.

 > 
 > (4) What CPU are you using?
 >     (And what cache)?

I have 366 mhz risc chip. Which I believe equates to a 700mhz Pentium
chip. I don't know my cache settings. 

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