Pandu Poluan wrote: > On Nov 28, 2011 6:24 AM, "Neil Bothwick" <n...@digimed.co.uk> wrote: >> >> On Mon, 28 Nov 2011 00:56:17 +0700, Pandu Poluan wrote: >> >> > I don't know where the 'blame' lies, but I've found myself >> > standardizing on MAKEOPTS=-j3, and PORTAGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--jobs >> > --load-average=<1.6*num_of_vCPU>" >> > >> > (Yes, no explicit number of jobs. The newer portages are smart enough >> > to keep starting new jobs until the load number is reached) >> >> The problem I found with that is the ebuilds load the system lightly to >> start with, before they enter the compile phase, to portage starts dozens >> of parallel ebuilds, then the system gets completely bogged down when >> they start compiling. >> > > Yes, sometimes that would happen if at the beginning there are > network-bound ebuilds all downloading their respective distfiles. The load > stays low until they all start ./configure-ing roughly at the same time. > Then all hell breaks loose. > > I successfully mitigate such "load-explosion" by doing a --fetchonly step > first, and keeping MAKEOPTS at low -j (which, in my case, is actually > required). > > Just to add more info: I use USE=graphite (with some CFLAGS, uh, > 'enhancements') with gcc-4.5.3. IIRC, I could push MAKEOPTS up to -j5 (and > even more, but I ran out of cores) when I was still using gcc-4.4.x and no > USE=graphite. > > Won't file a bug report, though. I have a feeling that my bug report re: > emerge failure will be marked WONTFIX thanks to the 'ricer special' CFLAGS > :-P > > Rgds,
It would be nice if there were some way to mark particular packages that should never be compiled in parallel (like the trick for using a using a separate, non-tmpfs build directory for large packages). The "load-explosion" you describe is bad enough with regular packages but when firefox, xulrunner, chromium and libreoffice all decide to start compiling at the same time it turns into a complete nightmare.
