Can the port command take advantage of multiple cores?

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Feb 2, 2008, at 19:25, Rainer Müller wrote:

> Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>
>> Changes in base should not break existing ports, if at all  
>> possible. Ports may fail with this option enabled. Therefore it's  
>> opt-in on a port-by-port basis.
>
> So every maintainer has to check for himself if his/her ports built  
> fine with parallel building enabled? With this approach it will  
> last a long time until we get real benefits of parallel building.  
> Although many users already own multi-core Macs and want to have  
> faster builds...
>
> I don't think that many ports will break with this. As Yves said, 5  
> out of 150 failed for him. Tagging 5 ports is easier than tagging 150.
> And it would be not a real problem if a port fails, there is always  
> the workaround to disable this option in macports.conf again until  
> the Portfile for a failing port is modified accordingly.

There was a long thread on this topic leading up to the current  
implementation; please review:

http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-users/2007-October/ 
006479.html

In particular Markus's comment here seems to exemplify why it's the  
way it is:

http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-users/2007-October/ 
006601.html

"The point is that ports that are not given 110% love (e.g.  
unmaintained ones, busy maintainers) will simply break [if parallel  
builds are enabled by default] probably in spectacular non- 
deterministic ways."

We have enough other problems with ports right now. Let's not make  
more, especially spectacular non-deterministic ones, by enabling  
parallel builds by default.