# Install -C is now my compile bottleneck

**URL:** <https://ziggit.dev/t/install-c-is-now-my-compile-bottleneck/16408>\
**Category:** Help\
**Tags:** build-system\
**Created:** [June 29, 2026, 1:58pm UTC](https://ziggit.dev/t/install-c-is-now-my-compile-bottleneck/16408 "2026-06-29T13:58:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![yinameah](https://ziggit.dev/user_avatar/ziggit.dev/yinameah/32/8453_2.png) [@yinameah](https://ziggit.dev/u/yinameah)\
**Post date:** [June 29, 2026, 1:58pm UTC](https://ziggit.dev/t/install-c-is-now-my-compile-bottleneck/16408/1 "2026-06-29T13:58:16Z")

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Ahahahahah ahah

But seriously, by a considerable margin.

So I have this dvui app that now compile instantaneously in incremental mode on zig master. But it is 260 Mo-ish and `install -C .zig-cache/...` takes 1.3 seconds on my laptop.

And yes, it feels very wrong 😉

But if I try to run the install command without the `-C` flag, it takes only 0.2 [s] (same with `cp`)

So I’m gonna guess that the comparison of files introduced with `-C`, or the reading of destination, or likely both is responsible for the extra duration.

Is anybody familiar with that stuff from zig’s perspective ?

PS : I can obviously tweak the build script to not copy the file but this seems a bit hackish…

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**Author:** ![yinameah](https://ziggit.dev/user_avatar/ziggit.dev/yinameah/32/8453_2.png) [@yinameah](https://ziggit.dev/u/yinameah)\
**Post date:** [June 29, 2026, 2:17pm UTC](https://ziggit.dev/t/install-c-is-now-my-compile-bottleneck/16408/2 "2026-06-29T14:17:49Z")

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Ah, but wait. I had the feeling of this being new. I just manage to test on 0.17.0-dev.864+3deb86baf and the exact same source code doesn’t show this behavior.

i.e. `install -C .zig-cache/....` is very fast.

So something changed in latest zig but I don’t get how this could influence the execution speed of `install` command …

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![yinameah](https://ziggit.dev/user_avatar/ziggit.dev/yinameah/32/8453_2.png) [@yinameah](https://ziggit.dev/u/yinameah)\
**Post date:** [June 29, 2026, 2:25pm UTC](https://ziggit.dev/t/install-c-is-now-my-compile-bottleneck/16408/3 "2026-06-29T14:25:11Z")

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Ok, sorry for the split message.

I know why it’s slower, the `-fincremental` results with a binary of `2.2G` instead of `229M` on 0.17.0-dev.1099+7db2ef610

a) I should have noticed this earlier, in which case I would have wait a couple of days to see if it’s a temporary regression

b) Since I already posted, is anybody aware of it ?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![yinameah](https://ziggit.dev/user_avatar/ziggit.dev/yinameah/32/8453_2.png) [@yinameah](https://ziggit.dev/u/yinameah)\
**Post date:** [July 3, 2026, 9:25am UTC](https://ziggit.dev/t/install-c-is-now-my-compile-bottleneck/16408/4 "2026-07-03T09:25:24Z")

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So, I couldn’t find any issue on the official bug tracker that seems related (but there is a lot related to incremental, I’ll refrain myself to increase the noise there for a little bit more time)

In the mean time, I put together a minimal repro : [https://codeberg.org/Yinameah/big\_incremental\_binaries\_zig\_repro](https://codeberg.org/Yinameah/big_incremental_binaries_zig_repro)

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**Author:** ![mlugg](https://ziggit.dev/user_avatar/ziggit.dev/mlugg/32/437_2.png) [@mlugg](https://ziggit.dev/u/mlugg)\
**Post date:** [July 16, 2026, 9:04am UTC](https://ziggit.dev/t/install-c-is-now-my-compile-bottleneck/16408/5 "2026-07-16T09:04:56Z")

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Oh, apologies for not noticing this thread earlier! Thanks for [reporting this](https://codeberg.org/ziglang/zig/issues/36169) on the issue tracker. I commented on that issue, but will also note here: this _should_ be fixed on the latest Zig compiler build on [https://ziglang.org/download](https://ziglang.org/download), so it’d be great if you could give that a try at some point!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![yinameah](https://ziggit.dev/user_avatar/ziggit.dev/yinameah/32/8453_2.png) [@yinameah](https://ziggit.dev/u/yinameah)\
**Post date:** [July 16, 2026, 6:33pm UTC](https://ziggit.dev/t/install-c-is-now-my-compile-bottleneck/16408/6 "2026-07-16T18:33:15Z")

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No worries. And you kind of did noticed since you fixed the issue 😉

So, yes, happy to confirm that building with 0.17.0-dev.1413+addc3c3b8 does revert to “normal sized” binary. Which puts me back on tracks for instant recompile. Yay !

Going to close the codeberg issue.  
Thanks for taking the time to answer.