[Mono-dev] Ideas for Mono on Windows

[Avery Pennarun]

2008/11/11 Jonathan Chambers <joncham at gmail.com>:
> 3) Compilation takes forever. I am working on a Dual Quad Core machine (8
> cores) at 3.6 Ghz. The mono build process still takes hours on my machine.
> This may be aggravated by virus scanners or other similar software, but the
> fact remains that all Windows users run virus scanners.

Have you thought about using a gcc-to-cygwin cross compiler running on
Linux?  I do that with some of my projects, and it's a whole lot
faster. I'd never want to go back to building on pure cygwin.

(Side note: we even build our Delphi applications that way at work,
because it turns out the command-line Delphi compiler runs fine under
Wine... more than twice as fast as under Windows XP.)

gdb on Windows is a total disaster, though.  Not that it's much better
on Linux.  You may want to do what we do at work, and use a
Linux-based cross compiler for your autobuilder/releases, and MSVC for
active development and debugging.

Have fun,

Avery