Package: findutils Version: 4.4.0-2 Severity: wishlist
xargs -Pn would be much more useful for parallelisation if it would try to keep running up to the specified number of processes. Right now, it starts the n processes at a time but will not start more processes until all have exited. When xargs is used to run programs with vastly differing runtimes (e.g. something that works on a directory and you have different-sized directories) this causes xargs to run only a few processes in parallel. (This also comes up when we.g. running something innocuous such as exiftran, as the cpu is underutilised most of the time as exiftran can have vastly different runtimes). If xargs would start a new process as soon as another process finished, this would keep utilisation up. -- System Information: Debian Release: 5.0 APT prefers stable APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (1, 'experimental') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Versions of packages findutils depends on: hi libc6 2.7-18 GNU C Library: Shared libraries findutils recommends no packages. Versions of packages findutils suggests: ii locate 4.4.0-2 maintain and query an index of a d -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
