tdebase build - heavy ram requirement

Anybody any thoughts on why the tdebase (from git) build is so heavy on ram? It makes building on embedded systems even more arduos than one might expect. On a desktop PC with 6 cores and 32GB ram, the build uses over 7GB of ram in the first couple of minutes ( I didn't build to the end, just wanted a quick check). Not many embeded systems are that ram abundant :) On the arm devices I've tried to natively build on, all the ram is used almost immediately (largest ram I have is 2G) and I can throw swap space at it ad infinitum without success. Cheers, Mike. --