What is the best approach for coding in a slow compilation environment?

Question

I used to be coding in C# in a TDD style - write/or change a small chunk of code, re-compile in 10 seconds the whole solution, re-run the tests and again. Easy...

That development methodology worked very well for me for a few years, until a last year when I had to go back to C++ coding and it really feels that my productivity has dramatically decreased since. The C++ as a language is not a problem - I had quite a lot of C++ dev experience... but in the past.

My productivity is still OK for a small projects, but it gets worse when with the increase of the project size and once compilation time hits 10+ minutes it gets really bad. And if I find the error I have to start compilation again, etc. That is just purely frustrating.

Thus I concluded that in a small chunks (as before) is not acceptable - any recommendations how can I get myself into the old gone habit of coding for an hour or so, when reviewing the code manually (without relying on a fast C# compiler), and only recompiling/re-running unit tests once in a couple of hours.

With a C# and TDD it was very easy to write a code in a evolutionary way - after a dozen of iterations whatever crap I started with was ending up in a good code, but it just does not work for me anymore (in a slow compilation environment).

Would really appreciate your inputs and recos.

p.s. not sure how to tag the question - anyone is welcome to re-tag the question appropriately.

Cheers.

Answer 1

I've found that recompiling and testing sort of pulls me out of the "zone", so in order to have the benefits of TDD, I commit fairly often into a git repository, and run a background process that checks out any new commit, runs the full test suite and annotates the commit object in git with the result. When I get around to it (usually in the evening), I then go back to the test results, fix any issues and "rewrite history", then re-run the tests on the new history. This way I don't have to interrupt my work even for the short times it takes to recompile (most of) my projects.