Re: NetBSD/vax 11.0RC1

["Maciej W. Rozycki" <macro%orcam.me.uk@localhost>]

On Mon, 16 Feb 2026, Paul Koning wrote:

> > I question the use of `-j' with an emulator unless it can fork/clone into 
> > multiple processes/threads on a multiprocessor, however with real hardware 
> > it does make a lot of sense to say `make -j <ncpu>' to utilise the extra 
> > CPUs which are otherwise busy with twiddling their thumbs, so if you have 
> > a multiprocessor VAX, say 4-way, then `make -j 4' should give you benefit.
> > That does hit Makefile quirks sometimes though, so watch out for issues!
> 
> The other reason for -j, even on a uniprocessor, is if things spend a 
> fair amount of time waiting for I/O completion.

 Compilation is usually CPU-bound though.  Unless it has to wait for VM to 
be paged in/out, in which case better avoid `-j' anyway.  Parallelising 
according to the number of available hardware execution threads seems a 
reasonable rule of thumb.

  Maciej