Re: [gentoo-user] make -j 4 recoverable ?

[Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.]

On Tuesday 21 March 2006 20:43, Meino Christian Cramer 
<Meino.Cramer@×××.de> wrote about '[gentoo-user] make -j 4 recoverable ?':
>  I am going to install Gentoo on my AMD64 X2 3800+ (Dual Core) based
>  system (x86 not x64!).

Ugh.  Do you use Solaris?  I think Sun is the only company in the world 
calling amd64 "x64".  (Yes, they only call it "x64" if it's amd64, if it's 
just EMT64 they call it "EMT64".)

This is gentoo, boy. 'Round here it's "amd64" for profiles and keywords and 
"x86_64" for C(HOST|BUILD|TARGET). ;)

>  With "make -j 4", which I could add to the make flags, compiling is a
>  lot faster. But some packages may fail to compile.

I /think/ you want '-j4' (no space).  Unlike the VAST MAJORITY of 
command-line options -j REQUIRES juxtaposition to accept it's argument.  
(Heck, non-gnu utilities may or may not even accept juxtaposed 
parameters.)  I suppose this is because -j has a meaning /without/ an 
argument which is basically -- run me completely out of filehandles 
spawning a ridiculous number of processes.

If you are properly juxtaposing your parameter, the behavior you speak of 
is truly odd.  I've been running -j5 for nearly a year now with few if any 
problems.  The Gentoo developers are nice enough to filter out -j for 
packages that don't support it well.

In any case, you can selectively disable parallel compiles for a particular 
emerge with MAKEOPTS="-j1" before the command like:
MAKEOPTS="-j1" emerge sys-libs/glibc
Changing the number of make jobs done in parallel won't (or /shouldn't/) 
affect what files are installed, so it's perfectly fine to has some 
packages installed "-j1" and some "-j4".

-- 
"If there's one thing we've established over the years,
it's that the vast majority of our users don't have the slightest
clue what's best for them in terms of package stability."
-- Gentoo Developer Ciaran McCreesh
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