[Mystlix]

Compiling your own software is a really humbling experience. When it takes way more time to compile a browser than a full fledged OS or you find out that seemingly simple programs need to pull a mind boggling amount of dependencies you really start to question the state of the software world

[dijit]

I think the main reason browsers are so extremely slow to compile is the heavy templating.

But, I agree, I can compile my entire OS including user-space software and desktop environments in about the same time it takes to compile chrome.

Which is scary.

But then again, people want it to do everything (WebUSB, WebGL etc; etc; etc;). So it stands to reason that it's inherently complicated and difficult to compile.

I wonder if the high iteration time hampers development...

[mwcampbell]

> I wonder if the high iteration time hampers development...

You might be interested in this post from someone on the Edge team at Microsoft:

https://textslashplain.com/2020/02/02/my-new-chromium-build-...

In particular:

> I returned to Microsoft as a Program Manager on the Edge team in mid-2018, unaware that replatforming atop Chromium was even a possibility until the day before I started. Just before I began, a lead sent me a 27 page PDF file containing the Edge-on-Chromium proposal. “What do you think?” he asked. I had a lot of thoughts (most of the form “OMG, yes!“) but one thing I told everyone who would listen is that we would never be able to keep up without having a cloud-compilation system akin to Goma.

[zh3]

> ...that seemingly simple programs need to pull a mind boggling amount of dependencies you really start to question the state of the software world

Recent jawdrop: 'apt-get install asciidoc' on a pi needs to pull 189 packages, will use 889Mb of additional disk space.

[arthur6667]

Maybe you already know, but in case not or someone else needs this: try with --no-install-recommends, it skips a lot of bs.

I don't recall exactly what it was, but I remember installing something like a tiny library and it wanted to also install mysql-server or something like that >_<

[hansel_der]

is good advice for any system not operated by a novice

  echo "APT { Install-Recommends \"false\"; }" >/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/90norecommendsthxby

[sameerds]

Why is that not good advice for a novice too? I do this by reflex every time I install Debian or Ubuntu, and to my experience it did not create a situation that needed "expertise in apt".

[mayli]

due to depends on latex and friends.

[tokumei]

Gentoo was fun, too bad I don’t have time for it anymore. I used to go for nice walks when Firefox was compiling. Great opportunity to go outside and take a break.

USE flags in Gentoo also allows for a much more configurable system.