EMERGE DEFAULT OPTS

EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS is Article description::a variable that defines entries to be appended to the command line. It is often used to allow for concurrent  operations through the   and   options, which tell Portage how many package builds can be ran simultaneously and up to what system load (load average) the parallelism can be used.

Parallel builds
With  (short form:  ),  runs N jobs at a time (without an argument,   will flood the processor with as many jobs as possible, and is not recommended). A typical value for N would be equal to the number of processor cores but not more processes than RAM/2GB.

For example, to run up to three build jobs simultaneously:

For more information, see the EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS article.

When used with  (short form:  ),  will try to keep the load average of the system less than X.Y, a floating point number. If  is set as well, then it will run up to the limit indicated by that parameter.

The load average value is the same as displayed by or, and for an N -core system, a load average of   would be a 100% load. Another rule of thumb here is to set  which will limit the load to 90%, thus maintaining system responsiveness.

These two settings are suited for long emerges which include multiple source code files to make the most of the  parameter. They can also cause errors in some cases, so use with caution and be prepared to comment these out if problems arise.