Re: Heads up: Problems with parallel make

[Ken Brown <kbrown@cornell.edu>]

On 2/16/2023 9:21 PM, Ken Brown via Cygwin-apps wrote:
> On 2/16/2023 2:47 AM, Marco Atzeri via Cygwin-apps wrote:
>> On 15.02.2023 19:09, Ken Brown via Cygwin-apps wrote:
>>> On 2/14/2023 4:23 PM, Marco Atzeri via Cygwin-apps wrote:
>>>> On 14.02.2023 17:49, Brian Inglis via Cygwin-apps wrote:
>>>>> There is a make 4.4.1 release candidate 4.40.0.90 with patches that 
>>>>> may help to deal with this:
>>>>>
>>>>>      https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/make/make-4.4.0.90.tar.lz{,.sig}
>>>>>
>>>>> https://sv.gnu.org/bugs/index.php?group=make&report_id=111&fix_release_id=110&set=custom
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> test version built and on the way
>>>
>>> The problems I reported with make 4.4 still exist in 4.4.0.90.
>>>
>>> Until someone can figure out why this happens, you might want to 
>>> consider building make so that it doesn't default to using a FIFO for 
>>> its jobserver.  I suggested to the make developers that they provide 
>>> a configure option for this purpose.  If they don't do this, I think 
>>> you could accomplish the same thing by configuring make with 
>>> ac_cv_func_mkfifo=no.
>>>
>>> Ken
>>
>> version 2 uploaded.
> 
> Thanks, Marco.  As expected, that fixes the problem for my test case 
> (building TeX Live).  Obviously it would be better if the make 
> developers would provide a configure option to use a pipe for the 
> jobserver, but this is a good workaround if they don't.

Just to finish this off, there's now a new release candidate 4.4.0.91 
for make, which makes the jobserver use a pipe by default on Cygwin. 
You can override this default when building make by defining 
JOBSERVER_USE_FIFO to 1, and you can override it when running make by 
using the make option --jobserver-style=fifo.  But there's no longer a 
need to build make with ac_cv_func_mkfifo=no, and there's no longer a 
need to use --jobserver-style=pipe when running make.

I'm very impressed with how responsive the make developer (Paul Smith) was.

Ken