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From: schoenep AT wrcs1 DOT urz DOT uni-wuppertal DOT DE (Van Schoenepauck)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Problem: Make eats up XMS
Date: 25 Oct 1995 13:17:33 GMT
Organization: University of Wuppertal
Lines: 42
Nntp-Posting-Host: wrcs3.urz.uni-wuppertal.de
To: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Dj-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp

Hello *.*,

just when I thought I had successfully installed DJGPP (vers. 1.12m4) 
_without_ a lot of trouble, I ran into the first problem: 
Make eats my memory!
I tried to compile a test file using a rather simple
Makefile of the form:
 
xyz.exe: xyz.cc
        gcc -O2 -g xyz.cc -o xyz -lgpp
        coff2exe xyz
 
When I feed this to Make, go32 (given the meminfo option) tells me upon 
start that it has about 3 mb of free XMS. But as soon as make spawns 
another copy of go32 which executes gcc, the new copy reports to have 
only -4 (yes, *minus* four) kb of free XMS, which of course results in 
some heavy swapping during compilation. In fact, I waited 20 minutes
or so before I aborted, and then tried the same compilation from the 
command line, without Make: It took less than 50 seconds, because 
gcc used the whole 3 mb XMS for the compilation.

I *do* have enough swapspace, so it should be no problem for go32 to
page out the whole XMS to disk. And I *did* read the FAQ, where I could
only find hints on what to do if there is not enough conventional mem.
 
Now my questions are: 
1. Why does Make use up XMS? I understand that every 
   copy of go32 which is currently loaded takes up some of the 
   conventional memory, but shouldn't it free as much high memory as 
   possible for every child it spawns? 
 
2. Is there a way around this? I don't want to do without Make if it 
   comes to managing more complex programming projects, but a slowdown 
   of this magnitude is, of course, unacceptable. 
 
Is it a bug? A feature? If anybody has a solution, *please* e-mail, 
or post a followup. Thanks in advance,
  
Jan Schoenepauck
schoenep AT wrcs3 DOT urz DOT uni-wuppertal DOT de