Re: Speeding up the bulk build scan phase

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

On Thu, Jan 15, 2026 at 03:41:05PM +0100, Jonathan Perkin wrote:
> You'll also be benefiting from a change I pushed to bob trunk that now execs
> bmake directly for scans rather than going via a shell:
> 
>   https://github.com/jperkin/bob/commit/02cecffe2a9d684afa5d028adc7ec1f3e934c1c0

Sounds good, thank you!

> > 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.
> 
> My worry about doing this is that it would override any setting that the
> user has for PBULK_CACHE_DIRECTORY in mk.conf.  I've personally been setting
> it since:
> 
>   commit 8329489d7a2e947ccee28402421d030f8477a325
>   Author: Jonathan Perkin <jperkin%joyent.com@localhost>
>   Date:   Tue Dec 27 11:25:15 2016 +0000
> 
>       Set PBULK_CACHE_DIRECTORY for supported branches.
> 
> and this would go against my goal for principle-of-least-astonishment.  I
> will likely instead just ensure that it is prominently documented in the
> examples.

I don't think this should be a user-settable variable at all, but a
bulk-build-internal one instead.

What do you see as advantage of being able to set it for a user?
 Thomas