Quote: "I highly doubt that. If you change one .cpp file, it should be fast. But if you change a critical header file, you could be looking at a long time. Our game at work can take almost 5 minutes to build--- but I've seen firsthand that some other full commercial games take over half an hour and the programmers make it auto-build before they get into work in the morning."
Depends though doesn't it. The companies I've been with tend to split things up rather than compile everything at once.
So while the engine would take 10minutes with the Render and Network Code at once, each one on thier own would take around 2minutes each.
That's re-building though, which you don't often need to do unless you've changed some drastic things.
You can seriously cut down compile time by changing smaller things.
Codewarrior and Visual Studio 2005 also now have the ability to make use of multi-machines to compile across. A bit like they've been doing with 3D for years. So again that can seriously reduce compile time.
Often a good trick I've come across is to edit in debug mode, then you can see changes real-time. Set Visual Studio to save them for the next build.
You right though it can take ages for a full rebuild. The Source Engine for example on this machine (Athlon64 X2 4200+) takes about 40minutes to build. Obviously once you've built it once it's best to just compile.
This is what Lee wishes to add to the compiler for 6. Something you might want to ask him about in 30min on IRC.
