[Nix-dev] Re: How do parallel builds scale?

[Marc Weber]

> By the way, do you know how much hydra waits because of waiting for
> dependencies? I think it shouldn't be too difficult to always find
> something else to build on hydra, but e. g. for package maintainers
Its not about keeping Hydra busy. Its about being able to deliver
patched versions fast if there is a use case (eg security patches)
In production systems it may matter whether you're able to deploy much
faster. However using faster / more machines would have more effect than
separating check phases ?
Currently its not most important to me.

> Using stats from hydra, nix could one day estimate the build time
> automatically. I don't see this as a priority now, as the usual users
> are IMHO going to prefer binaries from hydra in most cases.

If you use sources hydra uses you're fine. If you use a patched nixpgks
..

Marc Weber