Header image
Photo of Viktor Kirilov

Viktor Kirilov

With 4 years of professional experience with C++ in the games and VFX industries, Viktor currently spends his time writing open source software (since 01.01.2016) - and occasionally doing some contract work. He is the author of doctest - "The fastest feature-rich C++98/C++11 single-header testing framework". His interests are the making of games and game engines, high performance code, data oriented design, cryptocurrencies, optimizing workflows and incorporating good practices in the software development process such as testing and the use of modern tools like static analysis or instrumentation. Viktor is from Sofia, Bulgaria and his profession is his hobby.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Faster Builds

Tuesday 09:00
90 minute presentation
Advanced
Intermediate

C++ is notorious for things such as performance, expressiveness, the lack of a standard build system and package management, complexity and long compile times.

The inability to iterate quickly is one of the biggest killers of productivity. This talk is aimed at anyone interested in improving the last of these points - it will provide insights into why compilation (and linking) take so long for C++ and will then provide an exhaustive list of techniques and tools to mitigate the problem, such as:

  • tooling and infrastructure - hardware, build systems, caching, distributed builds, diagnostics of bottlenecks, code hygiene
  • techniques - unity builds, precompiled headers, linking (static vs shared libraries)
  • source code modification - the PIMPL idiom, better template use, annotations
  • modules - what they are, when they are coming to C++ and what becomes obsolete because of them