scripting the buildworld/installworld process

[Charles Howse]

> When I started timing my buildworlds, I figured out that you need 
> everything but the right hand stuff in the following
> 
> AMD Athlon 2000+ XP
> 877.636u 233.835s 23:02.33 80.4%        1350+1662k 46008+7469io 
> 2359pf+0w
> bw w -j2
> 891.151u 303.327s 35:02.77 56.8%        1305+1600k 52256+138679io 
> 2749pf+0w
> bw w -j3
> 894.429u 305.373s 31:29.87 63.4%        1305+1595k 50306+138970io 
> 1914pf+0w
> bw w -j4
> 893.259u 310.180s 32:43.57 61.2%        1308+1597k 56102+138705io 
> 2145pf+0w
> bw w -j5
> 893.563u 311.353s 30:31.44 65.7%        1302+1591k 53927+138930io 
> 2331pf+0w
> 
> The wall clock time is really how efficient your process is. The fact 
> that your user time or sys time is faster doesn't mean much 
> if the wall 
> clock time is 1/3 longer. 
> 
> I haven't automated timing this part because I time the whole 
> script and 
> not just the build. I would cut off the right hand side but it is too 
> trivial to use just "time mkworld" and cut and paste the time into a 
> "cat >> times.log" of my builds. This also lets me add comments in 
> addition to the build time information. For example, the AMD 
> 2000+ was 
> important because that was the first build after an upgrade from an 
> Intel P III 866. The upgrade was needed because the old mobo went 
> flaky.
> 
> I think that once you have it setup, I will probably make my 
> KISS simple 
> script more complicated :). I have one machine that the mouse doesn't 
> work in single user mode and including the timing into my mkworld 
> script would save time. I can always go back and edit my time log to 
> include the comments. If I have a choice, I would add the 
> date field to 
> the right hand side so that I can connect the time to the build log.

I read "briefly" your web page about the -j urban legend.
>From the stats above, it looks like it runs faster without the -j
flag...?
That might be something interesting to play with on my Celeron 300 w/
64MB.