[R-pkg-devel] Re-building vignettes had CPU time 9.2 times elapsed time

[Greg Hunt]

The question should be, in how many cases is the current behaviour a
problem?  In a shared environment, sure, you have to be more careful.  I'd
say don't let the teenagers in there. The CRAN build server does need to do
something to protect itself and I don't greatly mind the 2 thread limit, I
implemented it by hand in my examples and didn't think about it
afterwards.  On most 8, 16 or 32 way environments, dedicated or
semi-dedicated to a particular workload, the defaults make some level of
sense and they are probably most of the use cases.  Protecting high
processor count environments from people who don't know what they are doing
would seem to be a mismatch between the people and the environment, not so
much a matter of software.

On Sat, 26 Aug 2023 at 11:49, Jeff Newmiller <jdnewmil using dcn.davis.ca.us>
wrote:

> You have a really bizarre way of twisting what others are saying, Dirk. I
> have seen no-one here saying 'limit R to 2 threads' except for you, as a
> way to paint opposing views to be absurd.
>
> What _is_ being said is that users need to be in control_, but _the
> default needs to do least harm_ until those users take responsibility for
> that control. Do not turn the throttle up until the user is prepared for
> the consequences. Trying to subvert that responsibility into packages by
> default is going to make more trouble than giving the people using those
> packages simple examples of how to take that control.
>
> A similar problem happens when users discover .Rprofile and insert all
> those pesky library statements into it, making their scripts
> irreproducible. If data.table made a warp10() function that activated this
> current default performance setting then the user would be clearly at fault
> for using it in an inappropriate environment like a shared HPC or the CRAN
> servers. Don't put a brick on the accelerator of a teenager's car before
> they even figure out where the brakes are.
>
> On August 25, 2023 6:17:04 PM PDT, Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd using debian.org>
> wrote:
> >
> >On 26 August 2023 at 12:05, Simon Urbanek wrote:
> >| In reality it's more people running R on their laptops vs the rest of
> the world.
> >
> >My point was that we also have 'single user on really Yuge workstation'.
> >
> >Plus we all know that those users are often not sysadmins, and do not have
> >our levels of accumulated systems knowledge.
> >
> >So we should give _more_ power by default, not less.
> >
> >| [...] they will always be saying blatantly false things like "R is not
> for large data"
> >
> >By limiting R (and/or packages) to two threads we will only get more of
> >these.  Our collective call.
> >
> >This whole thread is pretty sad, actually.
> >
> >Dirk
> >
>
> --
> Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.
>
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