Re: Speeding up the bulk build scan phase

[Thomas Klausner <wiz%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2026 at 02:03:44PM +0100, Thomas Klausner wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 12, 2026 at 01:15:14PM +0100, Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
> > On 1/12/26 9:45 AM, Thomas Klausner wrote:
> > > 1. Create a cache file for the variables used by the built-in detection
> > 
> > This has existed for a long time under the PBULK_CACHE_DIRECTORY flag.
> 
> This sounds like something else - varcache only caches the built-in
> versions (and corresponding header file names) and doesn't look at
> package options.
> 
> So probably this should be set too, for another speed-up.

I've just got rid of two more forks in mk/compiler/gcc.mk, and with
that and setting PBULK_CACHE_DIRECTORY to an empty directory, a full
bulk build scan (using bob) is now down to 3m38s in a test run I just
did. So I recommend setting this too (but removing the directory after
every scan, to avoid problems when pkgsrc updates or /etc/mk.conf
changes the options for a package).

It would actually be nice if pbulk/bob handled this setting
automatically, i.e. set the variable to a temporary directory (only
used during the scan phase, or perhaps even during the build phase,
but there the speedup will be less noticeable) and remove it after the
bulk build finishes.
 Thomas