it takes 2 seconds to compile a hello world C++ project in netbeans (windows)

Question

I used code:blocks as the C++ IDE on Windows. I switched to netbeans 6.8 (with C/C++ plugin, MinGW, MSYS) recently, because netbeas have the nice feature of "checking syntax errors when typing" (same as working on Java or PHP projects).

But the painful thing is that, it takes 2 seconds to compile a simple hello world project in netbeans. Any trick to make it as fast as code:blocks, or at least make the compiling time no more than 0.5 second?

EDIT:
I did not care about this 2 seconds difference until I worked on Google codejam questions yesterday.

Answer 1

MinGW uses G++ 3.x, which is very very old. It's a limitation of the compiler itself -- old versions of G++ are simply slow. There are some "unofficial" G++ ports to windows that borrow from the MinGW project that use more recent (4.x) versions of G++, and it's possible your Code::Blocks IDE was using one of those.

I seriously doubt that the second and a half is significant in 99.9% of usages of most compilers anyway. Even if it is overhead imposed by the IDE itself, we're talking about what is essentially a one time cost -- it shouldn't blow up to insane compile times when you compile larger programs.

---

In response to FredOverflow's comment: From the MinGW installer (mingw.ini):

[mingw]
Build=12
URL=http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/mingw
Filename=MinGW-5.1.6.exe
packages=previous|current|candidate

[current]
runtime=mingwrt-3.17-mingw32-dev.tar.gz|7300
runtimeDLL=mingwrt-3.17-mingw32-dll.tar.gz|30
w32api=w32api-3.14-mingw32-dev.tar.gz|14460
binutils=binutils-2.20-1-mingw32-bin.tar.gz|26979
core=gcc-core-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar.gz|7712
gpp=gcc-g++-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar.gz|15480
g77=gcc-g77-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar.gz|5272
ada=gcc-ada-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar.gz|33860
java=gcc-java-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar.gz|43160
objc=gcc-objc-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar.gz|3720
make=make-3.81-20090914-mingw32-bin.tar.gz|723

[previous]
runtime=mingwrt-3.15.2-mingw32-dev.tar.gz|7616
runtimeDLL=mingwrt-3.15.2-mingw32-dll.tar.gz|40
w32api=w32api-3.13-mingw32-dev.tar.gz|14420
binutils=binutils-2.19.1-mingw32-bin.tar.gz|21093
core=gcc-core-3.4.2-20040916-1.tar.gz|8627
gpp=gcc-g++-3.4.2-20040916-1.tar.gz|16542
g77=gcc-g77-3.4.2-20040916-1.tar.gz|5158
ada=gcc-ada-3.4.2-20040916-1.tar.gz|33333
java=gcc-java-3.4.2-20040916-1.tar.gz|45547
objc=gcc-objc-3.4.2-20040916-1.tar.gz|4555
make=mingw32-make-3.81-20080326-2.tar.gz|727

[candidate]
binutils=binutils-2.18.50-20080109-2.tar.gz|20505
core=gcc-core-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar.gz|7712
gpp=gcc-g++-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar.gz|15480
g77=gcc-g77-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar.gz|5272
ada=gcc-ada-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar.gz|33860
java=gcc-java-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar.gz|43160
objc=gcc-objc-3.4.5-20060117-3.tar.gz|3720
make=mingw32-make-3.81-2.tar.gz|720

Answer 2

Two seconds to load a compiler, compile a source file, assemble it, and link it is actually pretty fast. The speed difference may be due to the very large memory footprint of Netbeans compared with the quite small one for Code:;Blocks. Netbeans is more or less unusable on my ancient laptop, whereas Code::Blocks works just fine.