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RE: Parallel builds across makefiles


From: Gardell, Steven
Subject: RE: Parallel builds across makefiles
Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2016 09:19:47 +0000

Thanks for the suggestions. I have captured a bunch more data and hence the delay. First I have started by reproducing the behavior with 4.2.1:

 

gmake realclean >& cleanlog.txt

/usr/bin/gmake-4.2.1 -j32 -Otarget dirsparallel=all release >& gmake421dpa32.log; date

Tue Jul 19 11:24:47 EDT 2016

Tue Jul 19 20:43:17 EDT 2016

gmake realclean >& cleanlog.txt

/usr/bin/gmake-4.2.1 -j32 -Onone dirsparallel=all release > & gmake421dpn32.log ; date

Tue Jul 19 21:01:48 EDT 2016

Tue Jul 19 22:05:40 EDT 2016

 

Essentially the same as 4.1. This –Otarget run is not just “a little slower,” it is pathologically slow. The 9 hour build time is slower than if I had run the

build with no parallelization whatsoever. (The –Onone time is a bit faster than what I see doing parallelization at just the leaf level)

 

Our build is a relatively straight-forward “choreographed” build as followed:

 

     Top-Level Makefile

            Makefile.libs – This is a list of directories containing C++ code getting built into different relocatable libraries (one per dir)

                  (sub-directory Makefiles)

            Mikefile.bins – This is a list of directories that link executables

                  (sub-directory Makefiles)

 

There are O(120) libraries to build, each of which ranges from 10-50 objects. There are about 30 executables to build.  What “dirsparallel=all” does is to turn on parallel make for Makefile.libs, Makefile.dirs, etc. The actual build is more complicated,  having codegen, unit test, lint, and packaging  activities, but it follows this simple model.

 

The defining characteristic here is a wide fan-out. There are a large number of relatively simple and brief makefiles. There will therefore be a few “middle management” makefiles that are waiting on children to complete (I imagine each of these occupies a make job??).

 

I have confirmed that my count of “g++” invocations is exactly the same for the two runs (4403)

 

The TMPDIR variable was not set. I set it to /tmp to insure that it is on a physical device. (The build and our home directories are NFS mounted) The total elapsed time for the “-Otarget” run was then 6 hours. This is enough of a reduction to be a little suspicious, but not much more.

 

I ran with strace for both the “none” case and the “target” case.  The summaries are attached. Unfortunately, I don’t think there is a smoking gun here.

 

I have also run the “-Otrace” case at a few different job-levels:

 

j8 – 6:34

j32 – 6:00

j256 – 9:49

 

From: David Boyce [mailto:address@hidden
Sent: Sunday, July 17, 2016 5:03 PM
To: Gardell, Steven <address@hidden>
Cc: address@hidden; address@hidden
Subject: Re: Parallel builds across makefiles

 

A couple of suggestions:

 

1. Check your value of TMPDIR if any. All -O is doing is redirecting output into a temp file and dumping it later. Effectively it turns command "foo" into "foo > $TMPDIR/blah; cat $TMPDIR/blah; unlink $TMPDIR/blah". This is why it seems almost impossible for it to slow things down appreciably, and a slow temp dir device might be one explanation. Along similar lines you could try "TMPDIR=/tmp make ..."

 

2. Try strace. It has a mode which will timestamp each system call and another which prints a table of system calls used and how much time it took. One of these will probably be instructive, especially when compared with the same without -O.

 

David

 

On Sun, Jul 17, 2016 at 12:22 PM, Gardell, Steven <address@hidden> wrote:

No I have not gotten to 4.2.1 yet.

I have experimented using j values ranging from 16 to 64. The majority of the testing is with -Otarget. But I have tried all of them.

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Smith [mailto:address@hidden]
Sent: Sunday, July 17, 2016 3:14 PM
To: Gardell, Steven <address@hidden>; address@hidden
Subject: Re: Parallel builds across makefiles

On Sun, 2016-07-17 at 15:48 +0000, Gardell, Steven wrote:
> OK. Thanks! I will try the latest version.
>
> FWIW, I am measuring is total wall clock time to complete the build.
> (date; gmake... ; date) This goes up substantially with all sync modes
> other than "none" if gmake has parallel invocations of sub-makes going
> (e.g. "gmake  -f SomeOtherMakefile").  When I am only parallelizing
> individual makefiles (with ACE, these tend to be simple lists of files
> to compile), then the behavior is as promised by the documentation.

Assuming you determine the behavior exists even in version 4.2.1, please provide more details.  What level of -j are you using?  Which sync mode are you using?  Do you get the same behavior even with lower levels of -j, if yours is very large?

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