From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jan 20 16:49:14 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B854E16A41F for ; Fri, 20 Jan 2006 16:49:14 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from gthorpe@myrealbox.com) Received: from fe2.ryerson.ca (fe2.ryerson.ca [141.117.101.23]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 051D343D75 for ; Fri, 20 Jan 2006 16:49:07 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from gthorpe@myrealbox.com) Received: from conversion-daemon.fe2.ryerson.ca by fe2.ryerson.ca (iPlanet Messaging Server 5.2 HotFix 2.02 (built Oct 21 2004)) id <0ITE00101H5CXE@fe2.ryerson.ca> (original mail from gthorpe@myrealbox.com) for freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org; Fri, 20 Jan 2006 11:49:06 -0500 (EST) Received: from [192.168.5.19] (fw.rnet.ryerson.ca [141.117.3.201]) by fe2.ryerson.ca (iPlanet Messaging Server 5.2 HotFix 2.02 (built Oct 21 2004)) with ESMTPS id <0ITE00EC7HDT9F@fe2.ryerson.ca>; Fri, 20 Jan 2006 11:49:06 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 11:49:29 -0500 From: Gary Thorpe In-reply-to: <20060119230604.GA98670@xor.obsecurity.org> To: Kris Kennaway Message-id: <43D11499.8040808@myrealbox.com> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT X-Accept-Language: en, en-us User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 References: <79e2026f0601142345x1a9269bdl3153d1bb110be08d@mail.gmail.com> <86ek34d35f.fsf@xps.des.no> <17359.49899.183831.844670@bhuda.mired.org> <86k6cww445.fsf@xps.des.no> <20060119175224.GA71633@csh.rit.edu> <79e2026f0601191215p117d78ebjbee2c4b710075154@mail.gmail.com> <43D0139A.1040601@myrealbox.com> <20060119230604.GA98670@xor.obsecurity.org> Cc: Wesley Shields , Ashok Shrestha , Brandon Flowers , Mike Meyer , freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, Dag-Erling Sm?rgrav Subject: Re: speed up port compiling using RAM (tmpfs) ??? X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 16:49:14 -0000 Kris Kennaway wrote: > On Thu, Jan 19, 2006 at 05:32:58PM -0500, Gary Thorpe wrote: > >>Ashok Shrestha wrote: >> >>>I mounted part of RAM as such: >>> >>>mdmfs -s 500m md /mnt >>> >>>Then put WRKDIRPREFIX=/path/to/md in /etc/make.conf. >>> >>>It substantially reduces compile time by about 5-10 times. >>> >>> >>>Thanx to all ur replies. >>> >>>-Ashok Shrestha >> >>An alternative is to try using the "-pipe" flag with GCC: this >>eliminates the need to use some temporary files by using a unix pipe for >>IPC. Setting another flag "-j 2" will allow 2 jobs to be done at the >>same time and should eliminate (by hiding) the I/O delays (this slows >>down the CPU slightly because of more task switches, but even with one >>job there are still lots of generated tasks). > > > -j is not safe to use with port builds since many ported software > contain race conditions in the build. > > Kris This effectively means that you cannot take advantage of SMP to compile FreeBSD's ports collection. That sounds like a big limitation...especially for people trying to speed up bulk builds. Is "-pipe" still a good idea? It should provide a significant performance boost, if the process is spending a lot of time doing disk I/O, without using up a lot of memory.