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Re: [LUG] GNU parallel

 

On 21/05/12 14:36, Kai Hendry wrote:
> I found the GNU parallel command a bit cumbersome myself.
> 
> I prefer Makefiles :-)
> 
> http://natalian.org/archives/2010/01/08/Parallelized_processes/

Hmm, on reflection I think I prefer "parallel" for most tasks, although
I don't use it currently. In particular it lets you do substitutions
like "find" does e.g. {}, but not just on file names.

Make is good for the "bring everything up to date" type task, since that
dependency handling is built in, I use it for Postfix tables (where
Postfix needs them put through postmap to hash them), aside from
compilation type tasks. We have a few tasks at work which a Makefile
would have been good for, but someone wrote a Perl script that does too
much instead.

I note that "parallel" comes with GNU sql and GNU sem, GNU sql provides
a command line for SQL which is database agnostic, GNU sem provides a
tool to keep N jobs running at once. Both I think address common
patterns for Linux command line work which are not well enough served
currently. I've tried to use "batch" to achieve a certain amount of
sensitivity to load, that sem might give you, but it didn't work well.

I didn't know xargs could do some of the stuff parallel does, although
the not keeping I/O sequential is something I've hit with other attempts
to run things in parallel, which parallel does right.

 Simon



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