bug#33643: [PATCH] gnu-build-system: Enable xz to decompress in parallel.

[Christopher Baines]

Efraim Flashner <address@hidden> writes:

> On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 07:20:08PM +0100, Christopher Baines wrote:
>>
>> Christopher Baines <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>> > It can take a little while to decompress some packages with large xz
>> > compressed source tar files. xz includes support for parallelism, so enable
>> > this using the parallel job count for the overall derivation.
>> >
>> > * guix/build/gnu-build-system.scm (unpack): Set XZ_OPT to pass the -T 
>> > option
>> > to xz to enable it to work in parallel if appropriate.
>> > ---
>> >  guix/build/gnu-build-system.scm | 6 +++++-
>> >  1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
>> >
>> > diff --git a/guix/build/gnu-build-system.scm 
>> > b/guix/build/gnu-build-system.scm
>> > index e5f3197b0..9d11e5b1e 100644
>> > --- a/guix/build/gnu-build-system.scm
>> > +++ b/guix/build/gnu-build-system.scm
>> > @@ -147,7 +147,7 @@ chance to be set."
>> >                locale (strerror (system-error-errno args)))
>> >        #t)))
>> >
>> > -(define* (unpack #:key source #:allow-other-keys)
>> > +(define* (unpack #:key source parallel-build? #:allow-other-keys)
>> >    "Unpack SOURCE in the working directory, and change directory within the
>> >  source.  When SOURCE is a directory, copy it in a sub-directory of the 
>> > current
>> >  working directory."
>> > @@ -161,6 +161,10 @@ working directory."
>> >          (copy-recursively source "."
>> >                            #:keep-mtime? #t))
>> >        (begin
>> > +        (when parallel-build?
>> > +          (setenv "XZ_OPT"
>> > +                  (format #f "-T~d" (parallel-job-count))))
>> > +
>> >          (if (string-suffix? ".zip" source)
>> >              (invoke "unzip" source)
>> >              (invoke "tar" "xvf" source))
>>
>> It's been a long long while, but now that core-updates has recently been
>> merged, I'd like to try and take a look at this again.
>>
>> I think the consensus was that this will only help for xz compressed
>> files where they have been compressed in parallel. I think it's still
>> worth doing though, as some of the big xz files that need decompressing
>> have been compressed in parallel, and this will speed up the builds when
>> multiple cores are available.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Chris
>
> I thought the last time we looked into this we figured out that there
> was a mistake in release notes or something and that parallel
> decompression isn't actually supported.

Hmm, I had a look to see if I could find some examples of where this
would apply, but I couldn't find any xz archives that we use in Guix
where it's been compressed in a way that allows multithreaded
decompression...

I'm pretty sure I had some examples before, but maybe somethings changed
in the intervening year.

Anyway, if I discover this again, I'll actually make a note of where
it's applicable.

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