> From: Peter Galbavy <peter@wonderland.org>
> Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 09:02:40 +0000 (GMT)

> > On Sun, 04 Feb 1996 11:37:47 -0800 
> >  "Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com" <michaelv@HeadCandy.com> wrote:
> > 
> >  > Have you ever tried using the -pipe flag as a default build flag?  It
> >  > should nullify any need to run mfs /tmp, at least for compiling.  I'd
> >  > be curious if it makes a difference in your case.  (Is there any
> >  > reason -pipe isn't default in sys.mk?  Does it use up *that* much more
> >  > memory while building?)
> > 
> > I could be a real lose on 4mb sun3/50 systems...
> 
> Using -pipe is a big win. On a system with not enough RAM, and not using
> -pip, the stuff gets written to intermidiate files. If this is an MFS /tmp
> then this is swap, else it is ordinary file system. On a system with less
> memory and -pipe the processes get swapped. If the swapper/pager is good
> enough then what is the difference ?

The difference is that -pipe forces the process to alternate in memory
each time one pipe full of data (5K?) is written into the pipe.  You
end up swapping the two processes N times, where N is approximately
the size of your *.i file divided by the pipe buffer size.

With an intermediate file, you load each process just once.

> On a system with lots of mem -pipe is a major winner. My default editing
> procedure for config generated Makefiles.

If all your systems have lots of RAM then that's fine.

Gordon