make on multiprocessor machines

[Andreas Höschler]

Hi all,

we tried the -j option of make for the first time to speed up builds of 
GNUstep projects on multiprocess machines. We are trying this on a 
T2000 with 6/24 cores. I get the following error:

-bash-3.00$ make -j 24
Making build-headers for framework SRFoundation...
 Creating 
/Build/SRFoundation/SRFoundation.framework/Versions/A/Headers...
make[1]: *** No rule to make target 
`/Build/SRFoundation/SRFoundation.framework/Versions/A', needed by 
`update-current-symlink'.  Stop.
make[1]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
 Creating /Build/SRFoundation/derived_src/.stamp...
 Creating /Build/SRFoundation/SRFoundation.framework/Versions/A/....
 Creating 
/Build/SRFoundation/SRFoundation.framework/Versions/A/Resources...
mkdir: Failed to make directory 
"/Build/SRFoundation/SRFoundation.framework/Versions"; File exists
mkdir: Failed to make directory 
"/Build/SRFoundation/SRFoundation.framework/Versions"; File exists
mkdir: Failed to make directory 
"/Build/SRFoundation/SRFoundation.framework/Versions/A"; File exists
make[1]: *** [/Build/SRFoundation/SRFoundation.framework/Versions/A/.] 
Error 2
mkdir: Failed to make directory 
"/Build/SRFoundation/SRFoundation.framework/Versions/A"; File exists
make: *** [SRFoundation.build-headers.framework.variables] Error 2
-bash-3.00$ date

Obviously multiple threads/processes try to create the target dir at 
the same time which leads to the error. This renders the j option 
useless for us. Is this an issue in gnu make or in the GNUstep make 
package? Can this be fixed somehow or do we have to live with 
serialized (slow) builds?

Thanks,

  Andreas