RAM drive for compiling - is there such a thing?

Question

An answer (see below) to one of the questions right here on Stack Overflow gave me an idea for a great little piece of software that could be in

Answer 1

There are plenty RAMDrives around, use one of those. Sorry, that would be reckless.

Only if you work entirely in the RAM disc, which is silly..

Psuedo-ish shell script, ramMake:

# setup locations
$ramdrive = /Volumes/ramspace
$project = $HOME/code/someproject

# ..create ram drive..

# sync project directory to RAM drive
rsync -av $project $ramdrive

# build
cd $ramdrive
make

#optional, copy the built data to the project directory:
rsync $ramdrive/build $project/build

That said, your compiler can possibly do this with no additional scripts.. Just change your build output location to a RAM disc, for example in Xcode, it's under Preferences, Building, "Place Build Products in:" and "Place Intermediate Build Files in:".