[Slackbuilds-users] "make -j4" [was: linuxwacom slackbuild]

[Jim Diamond]

On Fri, Aug  8, 2008 at 12:10 (-0500), Robby Workman wrote:

> Jim Diamond wrote:

>>P.S. For everyone who makes slack packages...  Maybe this has been
>>hashed out 100 times and you don't do it for some good reason, but if
>>not, would you consider using "-j 4" or something like than on your
>>"make" commands?  Even on a single core, single CPU machine this helps
>>noticeably, and on a multi-core machine it makes a big difference.


> No, that's not the best (IMHO) way to do it.  While "make -j4" might
> be appropriate for you, "make -j8" might be appropriate for me, and
> "make -j2" might be best for someone else.  As I see it, the best
> thing to do is use plain "make" -- that way, I (and everyone else)
> can set MAKEFLAGS in my shell environment.

> Example:

> MAKEFLAGS="-j8" make

Well, as you say, some people might like different choices.  However,
I suggest that extremely few people will benefit with "-j 1", and so
making the default choice even 2 would speed things up for (I suggest)
virtually everyone.  The mileage of those people still running 486's
with <= 32 Mbytes memory may vary :-)

One data point: my venerable Dell I8000 with its measly 192 MB of
memory and sloth-like P3-700 compiles things much more quickly with "-j 4".

Cheers.

				Jim