Hi All,
I have code that uses a pre-compiled header. (previously done by someone else)
In it, they are including several .h files.
If I have classes that use common .h files that are not currently in the existing pre-compiled header, would tossing them in there be of any real benefit? Maybe compilation speed, but I was thinking it would clean up the classes/headers a bit too?
What are do's and don't with pre-compiled headers?
Put non-changing system includes into the precompiled header. That will speed up compilation. Don't put any of your own header files that you might change into the precompiled header, because each time you change them you will have to rebuild the entire precompiled header.
DO NOT rely on headers being included by your precompiled header for "code cleanup" by removing those headers from your other source files. This creates a nightmare if you ever want to stop using PCH. You always want your dependencies to be explicit in every source file. Just include them in both places -- there is no harm in it (assuming you have appropriate include guards in place).
A header file that is included by multiple source files is a good candidate for inclusion in the PCH (particularly if it is lengthy). I find that I don't take the advice too seriously to only put headers that rarely change into the PCH. But, this depends on your overall project structure. If you frequently do full builds, definitely avoid this advice. If you want to minimize the work in incremental rebuilds, then it's a consideration. In my experience, rebuilding the PCH is relatively fast, and the cost of this is far outweighed by the overall speedup of compilation in general (in most cases). I'm not sure if all PCH systems are smart enough to figure out that every source file does not need to be rebuilt when a header included in the PCH changes (VC++ is), but explictly #includeing everything you need in every translation unit will surely facilitate this (another reason you should not rely on what is included by your PCH)
If your compiler supports an option to show the #include tree for each file during compilation, this can be a great help to identify headers that should be included in the PCH (the ones that show up the most). I recently went through this on a project I'm working on (which was already using PCH, but not optimally) and sped up the build of 750K lines of C++ from roughly 1.5 hours to 15 minutes.
It is a trade-off: system/library headers definitely go in the PCH, for ones in your project it depends.
Our project has a large amount of generated code that is changed much less frequently that other parts of the project. These headers go in the PCH because they take a lot of time to process in each individual file. If you change them it is expensive, but you have to weigh that cost against the more frequent smaller savings of having them in the file.