> I was just curios: while -jN may not work to build one package, is it
> still possible to build N different packages in parallel with pkgsrc?
> [What does that other LOCK variable do?]
>   

The PKGSRC_LOCKTYPE variable makes it possible to build packages in 
parallel, but it's still up to you to kick off N number of make 
processes.  i.e. you might do something like:
echo PKGSRC_LOCKTYPE=sleep >> /etc/mk.conf
cd /usr/pkgsrc/net/firefox && make install > make.out 2>&1 &
cd /usr/pkgsrc/lang/gcc && make install  > make.out 2>&1 &

This will probably work best if the dependency trees between each make 
have little overlap, as I don't think the build will go to the next 
dependency if an earlier is locked, so things can tend to get 
synchronized without much parallelism.

eric