Thank you the distributed compile usecase is a fun one to think about. I can see why it would require some intermediate set of bytes to shuffle across the network.
> Being backed by disk locally mainly helps for incrementally building so that you can change one file and only recompile intermediate files for translation units that depend on this file.
For the local incremental usecase I’d love to see a more state-full compiler instead. One that could change the bytes of a binary instead. e.g. give all functions some additional “empty padding”. Then any modifications could directly fit into the binary as needed until some defragmentation process which creates the final output binary.
> Being backed by disk locally mainly helps for incrementally building so that you can change one file and only recompile intermediate files for translation units that depend on this file.
For the local incremental usecase I’d love to see a more state-full compiler instead. One that could change the bytes of a binary instead. e.g. give all functions some additional “empty padding”. Then any modifications could directly fit into the binary as needed until some defragmentation process which creates the final output binary.