Next: 2.2 Doing a parallel Up: 2 Parallel building Previous: 2 Parallel building

2.1 What is parallel building

By default, gnustep-make builds software in ``serial'' mode. Each step of the building process is executed in a well-defined order. A step won't start until the previous step has completed.

If you have more than one CPU, or if you have a modern multi-core CPU, you can speed up your build significantly by telling gnustep-make to build software in ``parallel'' mode. In this case, whenever possible gnustep-make will run a number of tasks in parallel.

There are a number of simple rules that gnustep-make follows to decide when tasks can be run in parallel, or when there is a sequential order to be respected. They are the main topic of this tutorial.