speed up ports install

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 06:39:34AM -0700, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 09:21:18AM -0400, Eitan Adler wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> > 
> > I have a simple idea to make use the threads without any possibility of
> > conflicts.  I am sure there will be someone to point out a negative, but
> > I don't see any.
> > When you do "make install" launch a "make fetch-recursive" thread at the
> > same time.  That way you don't need to wait for the files to
> > install->fetch the next one->install it->fetch the next one...
> > For those who don't want that you could get the old behavior with "make
> > onlyinstall".  I currently do this with a "make" wrapper script and I
> > find installation to be faster.
> 
> What about this scenario?
> 
> # cd /usr/ports/friendly/apes
> # make install
> 
> <forked copy of 'make fetch-recursive' is launched in background>
> <fetch for friendly/apes finishes, "make" starts>
> <"make" finds a dependency which isn't installed, friendly/dogs>
> <"make" begins to build friendly/dogs, but friendly/dogs is still being
>   downloaded from fetch-recursive, because the source is very large;
>   say, 30MBytes>
> <"make" for friendly/dogs forks another fetch-recursive......>
> 
> What I'm trying to say is, there would need to be mechanisms put in
> place to cause the entire build process to block (halt/pause) until the
> backgrounded fetch-recursive has completed.

And I forgot another scenario:

Let's say you've added perl as a package, e.g. pkg_add -r perl, and
now you're going to build a program that's dependent upon it.

One of the known problems with ports/pkg "stuff" is that in the above
scenario, fetch and fetch-recursive will download a copy of the source
for perl (when detected as a dependency for something), which ultimately
serves zero purpose.  This doesn't happen when simply doing "make" or
"make install".

More food for thought.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |