How do I utilise all the cores for nmake?

Question

I just got a new quad core computer and noticed that nmake is only using 1 process.

I used to use make which had the switch -j4 for launching 4 processes. What is t

Answer 1

QT has a tool for this: http://download.qt.io/official_releases/jom/

They also use it per default in Qt creator.

Answer 2

Incredibuild claims to be able to run nmake builds on multiple cores / multiple machines. I don't have any experience of it.

Answer 3

Quick googling gives: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb385193.aspx

Answer 4

According to MSDN, there's no such option for nmake.

You can however make the compiler build multiple files in parallel by using the /MP option with the VC++ command line compiler and passing multiple files at the same time:

> cl /MP a.cpp b.cpp c.cpp

However note that most Makefiles don't call the compiler like this - they usual invoke the compiler separate for each individual source file, which would prevent the /MP option from doing anything useful.

Answer 5

Another generic, non-Qt-related way to tell nmake to use all the cores is to set environmental variable CL to /MP:

set CL=/MP
nmake

will use all the CPU cores.

Answer 6

This doesn't work for normal makefiles, but there is a setting in Visual Studio 2005 that lets you build more than one .vcproj file at the same time (provided one isn't dependent on the other). Tools -> Options -> Projects and Solutions -> Build and Run -> X maximum number of parallel project builds.