Re: [bug #49844] 'make -j' without explicit process count sometimes doesn't parallelize

[Sven C. Dack]

Hello,

this isn't a bug, but it's how the -j option works.

From the manual:

       -j [jobs], --jobs[=jobs]
            Specifies the number of jobs (commands) to run 
simultaneously.  If
            there is more than one -j option, the last one is 
effective.   If
            the  -j  option  is given without an argument, make will 
not limit
            the number of jobs that can run simultaneously.

Specifying -j1 or -j 1 are the same here.

Your problem is that you are using numbers as target names. So it's not 
a bug, because you are literally telling make to run only a single job.

You either have to restrict the number of jobs by giving an explicit 
count or by limiting it with a load average ( -l option) or use 
non-numerical make targets such as "t1 t2 t3 ..." or simply add another 
flag after -j to make.

From my own experience is it generally better to limit the number of 
jobs to what is reasonable or otherwise risk setting off a fork bomb - a 
run-away process which spawns too many process too fast and brings the 
system to a halt.

If it really needs to be unlimited then using non-numerical targets is 
what you can do:

$ seq 1000 | sed 's,^,t,' | xargs -n1000 make -j

which results in:

$ make -j t1 t2 t3 ...

Or if it needs to be unlimited and it has to be numerical arguments can 
you simply do this:

$ seq 1000 | xargs -n1000 make -j -C .

which results in:

$ make -j -C . 1 2 3 ...

The -C option tells make to change the directory to the current 
directory and avoids the target 1 to be treated as an optional argument 
to -j.

Cheers



On 21/06/17 20:39, Michael Builov wrote:
> Follow-up Comment #1, bug #49844 (project make):
>
> Hello.
>
> There is a bug in your trivial example:
>
> 1) 'seq 1000 | xargs -n1000 make -j5'
>
> expands to
>
> 'make -j5 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ...'
>
> and
>
> 2) 'seq 1000 | xargs -n1000 make -j'
>
> expands to
>
> 'make -j 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ...'
>
> As we can see, in second example '1' after '-j' make interprets as number of
> jobs, so "it not do any parallelization at all".
>
>
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