Practical Techniques for Improving C++ Build Times
summary
Facebook shrinks C++ builds from hours to about five–ten minutes with a mix of tooling and code changes: use Buck for reproducible, content-addressed builds and HTTP + local caches, populate CI-built artifacts to get ~100% cache hits or use a warm revision (≈30% slower but automatic); offload compilation with distcc, run builds on tmpfs, update compilers for ~20% speedups, apply PGO for ~10% gains, strip ELF sections to avoid needless relinks, use visibility-inlines-hidden for ~50% link wins (watch static variables), and parallel link jobs (N≈4) for ~30% link speedups.
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chapters (7)
- 0:00Introduction and motivation
- 2:53Measuring build times
- 13:43Build system infrastructure
- 25:41Compiler and linking optimizations
- 34:17Codebase refactoring techniques
- 37:32Failed experiments and lessons
- 43:21Q&A session
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