[arch-general] Default value of "j" in makeflags of makepkg.conf

[Martin S. Weber]

On Fri, Jan 03, 2014 at 04:44:05PM +0100, Timoth?e Ravier wrote:
> On 03/01/2014 16:24, Martin S. Weber wrote:
> > (...)
> 
> As far as I know, MAKE_JOBS_SAFE and 'options="!makeflags"' are
> packaging "tricks" to work around an upstream bug.

I agree with that assessment.

> Enabling parallel builds by default would only reveal bugs, which is a
> good thing generally, thus I don't understand your objections.

Yes, it is a good thing generally. I'm not sure 'objection' is the right
term though, I'd like to think of myself presenting angles of view onto
the subject that have been under-represented. Anyways, why I bring them
up: From my experience _watching_ pkgsrc development (I have not been involved
myself other than being a pkgsrc user for a decade, talking to devs from
time to time, opening PRs etc.), upstream developers care for another thing
than package maintainers. Yes, in the end, both want to deliver software to
users, but ISTM upstream devs are annoyed by the partially religious appearing
dogmas of the packagers (which the latter often have for good reason). While
upstream devs are specialists for the domain of software they are writing,
ISTM that packagers' domain of specialty does not overlap with upstream's.

In other words, say, packager knows everything about toolchain, API and ABI
compatibility, static vs. dynamic linking, etc.; while upstream dev does not
know (as much). Sermons from packager from pkg systems A, B, C, D (e.g., pkgsrc,
apt guys, arch guys, rpm guys, from different distributions & companies etc.)
sooner or later provoke ignorance from upstream dev (which is, to me, humanly
understandable).

In other words again: you might find what you consider a bug, but upstream
will not care, ignore your patches, not listen to you or simply get annoyed
(witnessed instances of this before).

Read e.g. this message from the author of SQLite and fossil about packager's
need/want for splitting dynamic libs from projects using said dynamic libs
(sqlite in that instance):

http://www.mail-archive.com/fossil-users@lists.fossil-scm.org/msg14153.html

Richard is a great sw dev (as witnessed by the artifacts he created or
helped to create), but a packager has a different point of view, area of
expertise, and might come to a different conclusion. And that's perfectly
fine, to some extent.

IMHO you're just about to open a can of worms that only you yourself will
want to swallow, for a) the greater good of squishing bugs and b) no change
in the big picture.

I suppose _I_ know enough about the dist-dependant way of turning off parallel
builds to scratch when it itches ... and I think I have presented a different
angle onto the issue, my job is done :)

Regards,
-Martin