> a typical Linux kernel in less than 15 seconds on a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4.
Hah! In 2004 (last news) maybe, and I wonder which featureset.
In fact, it's been a long time since I've compiled the kernel myself [1]. I wonder how long a minimal kernel takes to build nowadays. Of course, I guess "minimal" is even more ambiguous today than it was back then...
[1] Back in the day, "recompile your kernel" was the Linux joke answer to problems the way "try turning it off and on again" was for Windows...
On an i3 machine with plenty of RAM and an SSD, and GCC 4.9, a recent kernel builds in about 3.5 minutes. That's using the "defconfig" target, which is pretty bare-bones (only ext4, very few device drivers or fancy new features).
As another data point, Debian's kernel configuration on the same hardware takes 26 minutes to build.
I think 3.5 minutes down to less than 15 seconds for a recent kernel is probably possible. On the other hand, tcc generates code which runs 3.5x slower, so you'd have to be doing a lot of compiling and not much running for it to save any time. JIT'ing the kernel is a fun exercise, nonetheless.
Hah! In 2004 (last news) maybe, and I wonder which featureset.
In fact, it's been a long time since I've compiled the kernel myself [1]. I wonder how long a minimal kernel takes to build nowadays. Of course, I guess "minimal" is even more ambiguous today than it was back then...
[1] Back in the day, "recompile your kernel" was the Linux joke answer to problems the way "try turning it off and on again" was for Windows...