recompile the world

1 definition found

recompile the world - Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) :

  recompile the world
  
  
     The surprisingly large amount of work that needs to be done as the
     result of any small but globally visible program change. "The world"
     may mean the entirety of some huge program, or may in theory refer to
     every program of a certain class in the entire known universe. For
     instance, "Add one #define to stdio.h, and you have to recompile the
     world." This means that any minor change to the standard-I/O header
     file theoretically mandates recompiling every C program in existence,
     even if only to verify that the change didn't screw something else
  up.
     In practice, you may not actually have to recompile the world, but
  the
     implication is that some human cleverness is required to figure out
     what parts can be safely left out.