PaulNM wrote:
Hey folks,
[...]
I've also seen some mentions of -j9 by people with dual core systems elsewhere, indicating it drastically speed up some emerges.
...and drastically slow down others?
So this leaves me with several possibilities. There's -j3 (current setting), -j5, -j (no limit), -j9, or some other random number. Any suggestions/warnings/links would be appreciated.
Compiling the kernel with -j is a popular benchmark, because it really stresses the VM/disk/CPU. And before you get your hopes up too high: the ebuilds that really take long (mozilla, openoffice, glibc, gcc) won't use your makeopts anyway.
My guess; going higher than -j5 won't do much for you, there will always be a process not waiting for IO (if your disk can handle the load, that is) for each CPU. -j3 will be better for cpp compiles, which hog the CPU longer and won't have to be scheduled out like with -j5.
Other factors: is this a desktop system? Do you want to actually do something with it while it compiles? How much RAM do you have?
(These are rethorical questions ;-)) Regards, T. -- [email protected] mailing list
