Re: [edk2-devel] [PATCH] OvmfPkg: enable multiprocessor builds when using build.sh

["Laszlo Ersek" <lersek@redhat.com>]

On 07/22/19 09:11, Jordan Justen wrote:
> Maybe a commit message tweak would be:
> 
> OvmfPkg/build.sh: enable multithreaded build by default
> 
> On 2019-07-21 17:58:16, Rebecca Cran wrote:
>> When building both BaseTools and OvmfPkg, enable multiprocessor builds,
>> using up to the number of cores available in the system. This can
>> drastically reduce build times.
>> For example, on a modern ThreadRipper system the
>> time required to build decreases from 3 minutes to 1 minute.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Rebecca Cran <rebecca@bsdio.com>
>> ---
>>  OvmfPkg/build.sh | 2 +-
>>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
>>
>> diff --git a/OvmfPkg/build.sh b/OvmfPkg/build.sh
>> index 4fcbdd2bc9..5d3a672bd2 100755
>> --- a/OvmfPkg/build.sh
>> +++ b/OvmfPkg/build.sh
>> @@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ ARCH_X64=no
>>  BUILDTARGET=DEBUG
>>  BUILD_OPTIONS=
>>  PLATFORMFILE=
>> -THREADNUMBER=1
>> +THREADNUMBER=$(getconf _NPROCESSORS_ONLN)
> 
> Based on OvmfPkg/build.sh --help, I think initializing THREADNUMBER to
> 0 might have the same effect, but not depend on getconf. Does that
> work?

My understanding is the same. The zero value causes the edk2 "build"
utility to fetch the logical CPU count with Python's
multiprocessing.cpu_count() method:

[Source/Python/build/build.py]

        if self.ThreadNumber == 0:
            try:
                self.ThreadNumber = multiprocessing.cpu_count()
            except (ImportError, NotImplementedError):
                self.ThreadNumber = 1

> I'm not sure why I defaulted this to single threaded build way back in
> 578630802e.

Your commit 578630802ee5 ("accept "-n THREADNUMBER" in OvmfPkg build
script", 2012-07-10) predates the now-default invocation of
multiprocessing.cpu_count() in "build.py".

The latter was added in 29af38b0f8f2 ("BaseTools: Enable
MAX_CONCURRENT_THREAD_NUMBER = 0 feature", 2018-01-15).

Therefore, your patch was consistent with the BaseTools behavior, at the
time you wrote it. We can consider Rebecca's patch to restore the
consistency between "OvmfPkg/build.sh" and the BaseTools default behavior.

> It looks like if we tweaked things more, and omitted adding the -n
> parameter to the build command by default, then it would use the
> Conf/target.txt value, which by default appears to also be 0, so this
> could accomplish the same thing, but also let a user set it in
> target.txt.

I assume that users prefer passing a simple command line parameter to
editing a text file. IOW I believe "THREADNUMBER=0" would be the best
solution.

Thanks
Laszlo

> 
> -Jordan
> 
>>  LAST_ARG=
>>  RUN_QEMU=no
>>  ENABLE_FLASH=no
>> -- 
>> 2.22.0
>>
> 
> 
>