Why is MinGW very slow?

c++ performance mingw codeblocks
Calmarius picture Calmarius · May 30, 2009 · Viewed 25.2k times · Source

I'm using the Code::Blocks IDE with GCC/MinGW on Windows, and I'm trying to build a wxWidgets application which has ca. 20k lines and 40 source modules. And it builds very very slow.

Compiling a C++ module lasts 2-5 seconds, and linking lasts even 2-3 minutes.

It's a portable code, and this code compiles very fast on Linux. I can't follow the build message window... The entire process lasts less than 20 seconds.

I tried the common tweaks (for example, precompiled header, turn optimizations off, etc.), but nothing worked.

Why is it so slow?

Answer

mdaniel picture mdaniel · Dec 8, 2009

Are you on an Active Directory domain, but not immediately connected to it?

While I don't have the "answer" as to why MinGW would be slow, it has been my experience that computers which belong to an AD domain, but are unable to reach the AD controller, have a delay in starting executables (such as rxvt.exe) and currently running ones experience a pause or stutter (such as emacs, which is built using MinGW).

I am still investigating to determine the actual cause of this behavior, but thought I would mention it in case it applies to you.

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