pkgsrc has grown to the point where the following happens: valkyrie% pwd /usr/pkgsrc valkyrie% grep foo */*/Makefile /usr/bin/grep: Argument list too long. Exit 1 valkyrie%
I've said on a number of occasions over the last few years that this is the point at which we should consider raising ARG_MAX. It's currently 256K; changing it to 512K would last a good while, at least by this criterion. As far as I know there is no compat logic required, as the only consumer of ARG_MAX-size data is the kernel, and old versions of e.g. xargs that use a smaller value won't break. The downside is that it increases the memory load, and possibly increases the chances that there'll be trouble allocating the space at exec time. (I don't actually know how this is done in NetBSD, but there's only a finite number of reasonably sane ways to go about it and none of them are immune to load and/or fragmentation.) thoughts? -- David A. Holland [email protected]
