Re: Add support for limiting CPU pressure

[Howard Chu]

contrib@zhengqiu.net wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> While we are doing development with Yocto Project (1), a source-
> based Linux distro builder, we found that many instances of making
> running in parallel with other work can overload even a large 
> many-core build machine. Existing mechanisms that are either not
> system-wide (-j) or are too slow(-l has 1 minute averaging), so in 
> order to make optimal use of a multi-core system for some larger
> tasks we need a new mechanism.

> All the tests are done using an Ubuntu System, as we are not very lucky to 
> find similar features on macOS/Windows, so if you know anything, please 
> help us out! Additionally, we also want to gather more data, so if you know
> any other large packages that make is often tested with, please let us know
> as well!

Relying on a new non-portable kernel feature sounds like a pretty bad idea.
Especially when you can easily solve the "not system-wide" aspect of "make -j"
portably: by using a named pipe. It should be a simple job to patch make to
create or reference a named pipe in an initial invocation, and the rest of
the existing jobserver machinery will Just Work after that, and all of
the relevant OSs have support for named pipes.

-- 
  -- Howard Chu
  CTO, Symas Corp.           http://www.symas.com
  Director, Highland Sun     http://highlandsun.com/hyc/
  Chief Architect, OpenLDAP  http://www.openldap.org/project/