Re: [boost] [1.58.0] Release candidates available

Subject: Re: [boost] [1.58.0] Release candidates available
From: Rob Stewart (rob.stewart_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-04-07 04:40:53

On April 7, 2015 4:22:05 AM EDT, Olaf van der Spek <ml_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 10:00 AM, Andrey Semashev
> <andrey.semashev_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> >> Could b2 default to -jX where X is the number of cores?
> >
> > This would be unexpected
> 
> Why?

It would be unlike other build tools, like make. It would be an breaking interface change.

> > and detrimental if there is not enough RAM.
> 
> How much RAM is needed?

It scales almost linearly, I imagine. Each compiler instance requires memory to build a translation unit.

If Boost used to build fine on a limited machine, it might slow to a crawl due to paging with the added parallelism. Such users would have to use -j1 to avoid that problem.

Those with memory enough and more CPUs need to opt in to benefit, of course, but the build doesn't swamp such machines by default. However, if the option could be set in user.jam, then those that wish to opt in can do so once and then forget about it.

___
Rob

(Sent from my portable computation engine)