Faster FreeBSD Ports Collection Compiles with ccache and tmpfs

Sunday, February 11 2018

ccache is a compiler cache. It speeds up recompilation by caching previous compilations and detecting when the same compilation is being done again. Sounds like something you would want to have if you’re compiling most software from source, as I do. As a bonus, we’re setting the work directory to a ramdisk, so all compile activity is done in memory instead of on disk. Here’s how you do it.

Install ccache:

cd /usr/ports/devel/ccache
make install clean

Add a couple of lines to /etc/make.conf:

WRKDIRPREFIX=/ram
CCACHE_DIR=/var/cache/ccache
WITH_CCACHE_BUILD=yes

Create a /ram folder for the tmpfs mountpoint. We’re using a size of 2 GB here, adjust to taste:

mkdir /ram
echo 'none /ram tmpfs rw,size=2147483648 0 0' >> /etc/fstab
mount /ram

Set some defaults in ~/.ccache/ccache.conf:

max_size = 5G
cache_dir = /var/cache/ccache

Enjoy faster compiles.

To check space usage of the cache and other stats:

ccache -s