preventing sleep during compilation

[Scott Webster]

On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 7:55 PM, Jason Swails <jason.swails at gmail.com> wrote:
> Check out Caffeine at the Mac app store.  It drops something in your toolbar
> at the top of your screen (looks like a coffee mug).  A single click and it
> prevents your computer from going to sleep and/or showing the screen saver.
> (Easiest manual way of turning sleep on/off I've seen)
>

Ok, that sounds potentially useful.

> I've never had my MacBook Pro turn off, either (I don't have a desktop to
> try it out on), but the hardware is different.  It could be that your HDD
> cache is bigger/better on the iMac so it doesn't have to spin up as often
> (indeed, maybe not even often enough to register before going to sleep).
>
> Does it actually go to sleep mid-compile?  Or does it get stuck somewhere
> (i.e. in download stage) where computer resources aren't used so it assumes
> all is safe to sleep?
>

Slept in the middle of "Building atlas" which should be CPU intensive.

My iMac does seem to be way more consistent about going to sleep in
general.  The macbook often fails to go to sleep entirely, even when
I'm not doing anything on it for hours.

Scott