Even if Windows is open sourced (which would be pretty cool just to peak in ther...

jononor · on Dec 4, 2018

How long do you think it takes to compile a full Linux desktop distribution like Debian or Arch Linux? Small communities manage to do this regularly. Maybe not so nice on an individual laptop, but there are ways.

dagw · on Dec 4, 2018

I heard a full build takes over 18 hours on insane hardware, talkin 64+ cores.

A machine like that can be had for only 2-4$ hour on your favorite cloud computing platform.

And hopefully the code is sanely enough structured that you don't have to do a complete rebuild too often.

GordonS · on Dec 4, 2018

I compiled GCC from source recently - it took several hours on an 8-core Xeon with 64GB of RAM.

Lots of projects take a long time to build, so it's not a show-stopper by any means. I imagine you could also mix precompiled parts with parts you compiled from source too.

megous · on Dec 5, 2018

Normally, it takes a few minutes on 4-core 6 year old i5 ivy bridge to build a cross-compiler for C/C++.

Just not to scare someone off, from building gcc. :] It's fun.

mikestew · on Dec 4, 2018

It's going on fifteen years since I had anything to do with the Windows build, but that sounds...excessive. You could certainly take the afternoon off, though.

TylerE · on Dec 4, 2018

Doesn't sound excessive to me.

Sounds about like the days it took to boostrap up Gentoo+X+KDE+etc back in the day.

maxxxxx · on Dec 4, 2018

I don't see that as a problem. A lot of people and orgs can afford that.

monocasa · on Dec 4, 2018

So what, like $5 on AWS?