Added support for passing an (impure) NIX_BUILD_CORES variable to build expressions.

This patch adds the configuration file variable "build-cores" and the
command line argument "--cores". These settings specify the number of
CPU cores to utilize for parallel building within a job, i.e. by passing
an appropriate "-j" flag to GNU Make. The default value is 1, which
means that parallel building is *disabled*. If the number of build cores
is specified as 0 (synonymously: "guess" or "auto"), then the actual
value is supposed to be auto-detected by builders at run-time, i.e by
calling the nproc(1) utility from coreutils.

The environment variable $NIX_BUILD_CORES is available to builders, but
the contents of that variable does *not* influence the hash that goes
into the $out store path, i.e. the number of build cores to be utilized
can be changed at will without requiring any re-builds.

3 files changed, 9 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/src/libstore/build.cc b/src/libstore/build.cc
index f901c1f7d99e..a53c23bf447d 100644
--- a/src/libstore/build.cc
+++ b/src/libstore/build.cc
@@ -1411,6 +1411,9 @@ void DerivationGoal::startBuilder()
        in the store or in the build directory). */
     env["NIX_STORE"] = nixStore;
 
+    /* The maximum number of cores to utilize for parallel building. */
+    env["NIX_BUILD_CORES"] = (format("%d") % buildCores).str();
+
     /* Add all bindings specified in the derivation. */
     foreach (StringPairs::iterator, i, drv.env)
         env[i->first] = i->second;
diff --git a/src/libstore/globals.cc b/src/libstore/globals.cc
index cc0e44e8e34e..75d2f69c2b72 100644
--- a/src/libstore/globals.cc
+++ b/src/libstore/globals.cc
@@ -22,6 +22,7 @@ bool keepGoing = false;
 bool tryFallback = false;
 Verbosity buildVerbosity = lvlInfo;
 unsigned int maxBuildJobs = 1;
+unsigned int buildCores = 1;
 bool readOnlyMode = false;
 string thisSystem = "unset";
 time_t maxSilentTime = 0;
diff --git a/src/libstore/globals.hh b/src/libstore/globals.hh
index d3388e309c1b..a74a741d677e 100644
--- a/src/libstore/globals.hh
+++ b/src/libstore/globals.hh
@@ -55,6 +55,11 @@ extern Verbosity buildVerbosity;
 /* Maximum number of parallel build jobs.  0 means unlimited. */
 extern unsigned int maxBuildJobs;
 
+/* Number of CPU cores to utilize in parallel within a build, i.e. by passing
+   this number to Make via '-j'. 0 means that the number of actual CPU cores on
+   the local host ought to be auto-detected. */
+extern unsigned int buildCores;
+
 /* Read-only mode.  Don't copy stuff to the store, don't change the
    database. */
 extern bool readOnlyMode;