When is it safe to use -jX with make?

[Mike Meyer]

In <20030407001131.GA54382 at rot13.obsecurity.org>, Kris Kennaway <kris at obsecurity.org> typed:
> > Searching the archives I came across a discussion from december
> > concluding ports should not be built with -jX. Does this apply to
> > all ports? 
> Most of them, probably.

Actually, most of them are safe to build with -jX (and I'm sorry if
that's what you meant). I had portupgrade running -j4 for a while, and
a half-dozen or so of the 60 I upgraded had problems. The nasty thing
is that some of the failure modes involve makes looping forever across
the same part of the process.

Unfortunately, the only way to found out is to try it and see. I gave
up on it, and just let portupgrade run unattended. It's faster than
dealing with the breakage.

	<mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>		http://www.mired.org/consulting.html
Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.