[TIP] windows build : low priority

[Sebastien BARRE]

Hi

This is no fresh news, but here is a reminder regarding a well known issue 
: for these of us that are building VTK from source (and quite often if you 
are using the CVS), launching nmake *at command prompt* will freeze your PC 
for sometimes more than 2 hours.

Yes, NT is supposed to be multithread, but as nmake will run using NORMAL 
priority, there is no chance that you might do anything useful except 
drinking coffee.

So let's run nmake at LOW prority. Open a batch file called nmakelow.bat, 
and type that line :

start /LOW /B /WAIT nmake

Put nmakelow.bat anywhere in your PATH (near nmake.exe, or in the winnt/ 
directory), and instead of running nmake, now issue nmakelow, which will 
call the batch file, which will call nmake, etc. All 
processes/commands/programs run by nmake will use LOW priority, thus 
allowing you to work on your computer interactively.

If you are not sitting in front of your computer, there will be no 
difference between nmake and nmakelow, it will swallow 100% of your CPU. If 
you using nmakelow and doing "non-CPU intensive" stuff simultaneously, 
well... this does not make much difference either :)

Hope this helps

If you are building VTK or VTK programs from the VC++ IDE, this is another 
story (nmake is not used), there is a patch, feel free to ask...
--------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the private VTK discussion list. Please keep messages on-topic.
Check the FAQ at: <http://public.kitware.com/cgi-bin/vtkfaq>
To UNSUBSCRIBE, send message body containing "unsubscribe vtkusers" to
<majordomo at public.kitware.com>. For help, send message body containing
"info vtkusers" to the same address.
--------------------------------------------------------------------