Subject: Re: bug#11707: 24.1.50; 'make recompile' does not use BYTE_COMPILE_FLAGS on Windows

From: Stefan Monnier <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2012 10:35:40 -0400

>> You should use "make compile" in this situation.  "make recompile"
>> might produce incorrect byte code, because it compiles all the files
>> in the same Emacs session.

Actually, I don't know of any case where it ends up generating incorrect
byte-code.  It will signal different (fewer) warnings and things like
that, but AFAIK the generated byte-code should be pretty much
equivalent.  Moreover, if it ever ends up generating incorrect
byte-code, it's most likely because of a bug in some other file
(typically, the bug would be that Emacs's behavior is modified just by
loading that file).

> I would like to suggest just removing the "recompile" target altogether. 
> Although I have never used it for anything personally, so maybe I'm
> missing something, but I cannot see why this target should exist.

It is significantly faster on uniprocessor machines.

I don't think we should remove it, but we should definitely rename it
because nothing in "compile -vs- recompile" hints at the difference.

We could rename it to "single-process-compile" or something like that.

        Stefan