Getting started with PCH in a VC++ project

Question

I'm working on a VC++ project in VS 2012 that takes about 8-10 minutes for a full compile. I know PCH can speedup compile times by upto 10x. I have currently disabled PCH in my project and I'm including header files where they are needed. How do I get started with PCH? I've looked everywhere for "how to" guides but all I got is the docs.

I'm assuming I'll have to :

1. Configure my project for PCH, creating a blank PCH header file
2. Collect headers from every .cpp file and place it into the PCH header file
3. Modify every file removing all header imports
4. Recompile and hope that nothing goes wrong ;)

How do I get started with this (specifically #1)? Have you modified a project to use PCH and what are the stumbling blocks or common problems/issues therein? Can PCH cause any problems or is it just the same compile-time/runtime behaviour as normal includes? Is there a tool to automate the process or do I have to go thru 500 .cpp files by hand and modify it to use PCH?

And last but not least, what is the compilation time speedup I can expect with PCH? Is it 2x-10x? Or would it just go like 30% faster? (which does not justify the time involved)

Answer 1

After configuring my project to use PCH, full-compile times were down to half, and incremental builds occurred almost instantly. PCH is a very effective way to speedup compile times, and I highly recommend it.

Althouh dsharlet mentions many important points, he skips some crucial steps that I had to eventually figure out. So here is the complete guide to configuring your project to use PCH:

Getting started with PCH in a VC++ project

1. Backup your src dir and any other directories that contain source code ... (you'll need this in case anything goes wrong)

2. Create 2 files in your project, Globals.cpp and Globals.h .. (choose any name but stick to it)

3. Right click Globals.cpp and open Properties, choose Configuration > All configurations

4. Go to C/C++ | Precompiled Header, and fill these in:

   • Precompiled Header : Create (/Yc)
   • Precompiled Header File : Globals.h

5. Open Globals.cpp and add this one line in, and nothing more: #include "Globals.h"

6. Right click your VC++ project and open Properties, choose Configuration > All configurations

7. Go to C/C++ | Precompiled Header, and fill these in:

   • Precompiled Header : Use (/Yu)
   • Precompiled Header File : Globals.h

8. Open all the .h and .cpp files in your project, and add this at the very top: #include "Globals.h"

9. Open Globals.h and add the following in: (its very important you have #pragma once at the top)

    #pragma once
   
    #include <stdio.h>
    #include <stdlib.h>
    #include <stdarg.h>
    #include <stddef.h>
    #include <memory>
    #include <string.h>
    #include <limits.h>
    #include <float.h>
    #include <time.h>
    #include <ctype.h>
    #include <wchar.h>
    #include <wctype.h>
    #include <malloc.h>
    #include <locale.h>
    #include <math.h>
   
    // Windows SDK
    #define _WIN32_WINNT 0x0501     // _WIN32_WINNT_WINXP
    #include <SDKDDKVer.h>
   
    // Windows API
    #define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN
    #include <windows.h>
   

   • These includes are typical candidates for your PCH file
   • Remove the includes that you're not using
   • Go through your project and collect any more header files that do not change often

10. Using find and replace, search for each of the #include's in your PCH file, and remove them from all the .h and .cpp files in your project.

11. Do a full compile and ensure everything is working okay. Here are some solutions for common problems you'll encounter:

---

PCH file includes itself:

Your PCH file is including a header that includes the PCH header file again, creating a kind of circular dependency. Double click the error to take you to the offending file, and simply remove the line that says #include "Globals.h"

---

Undefined symbol X

Although all your project files can include the PCH header, the files included inside the PCH header cannot include the PCH header! (as stated above) so you'll need to add back any imports that were previously in the file. (diff the file with the backup version)

---

Cannot find symbol logf

Sometimes the global PCH file does not behave as expected, and breaks compiling with crazy errors that are impossible to solve. You can then turn off PCH for individual source code files.

1. Right click your .cpp file and open Properties, choose Configuration > All configurations

2. Go to C/C++ | Precompiled Header, and fill these in:

   • Precompiled Header : Not Using Precompiled Headers

3. Remove the line #include "Globals.h" in your .cpp file

4. Add back whatever imports the file originally had. (diff the file with the backup version)

Answer 2

Here's how I use PCH with decent results:

1. Go to the project properties, C/C++|PCH set Precompiled Header option to 'Use'. Set Precompiled Header File to something you want.
2. Go to the properties of a cpp file you want to be the PCH, and set the Precompiled Header option to 'Create' (it will have defaulted to 'Use' from the project property setting).
3. Include the pch header in all your cpp files in the project (basically, the ones that have 'Use' set for the Precompiled Header option). I suppose you could turn off 'Use' for some cpp files in the project instead of add the include for the PCH, but I've never tried that...

At this point, the project should still build and behave exactly as it used to, but there may not be any real improvement in compile time. Now, you'll need to move some of your #include "...h" to the PCH header file (and delete the includes of those files from elsewhere in the project). The includes that you should move to the PCH header should be headers that are included in many files, but change infrequently. Examples: STL headers, windows.h, core functionality headers from your project, etc.

Once PCH is set up, it should be transparent. It's basically just helping the compiler cache some intermediate compilation data. In other words, if you turned off PCH in your project, everything should still build exactly as it would have with PCH turned on (except slower!)

The speedup entirely depends on how much code is moved into the PCH (how much included code from headers is moved from arbitrary cpp files to the PCH header). I've seen multiple times improvement, but haven't benchmarked it precisely. I definitely felt like it was worth doing when I've gone through the trouble to use PCH on a big project.