Re: best options to try to avoid bogging down user's systems with parallel builds?

[paralleluser]

Friends,

Thank you for thinking on this topic.  Please allow me to make a related 
observation.

Remember the more direct user that puts the max number of parallel jobs into a 
file and changes that value over time.

echo 10 > job_count
parallel -j ./job_count  COMMAND :::: BIG-WORK-LIST

# while parallel is working, I want the load to go down
echo 1 > job_count

# now I will go to a meeting that will last about an hour, computer will be 
unused so increase jobs
echo 10 > job_count; sleep 1h; echo 1 > job_count

1 is the minimum parallel job count.  I always thought you could make a case 
for 0 to have parallel "freeze" new work.

# I want parallel to stop new jobs for a while so no new load is taken up
echo 0 > job_count; 

Right now "0" does something else.  Consider 

echo stop > job_count
echo -1 > job_count

Sorry to interrupt the current thought process...

Thanks!
John