Make "make" default to "make -j 8"

Question

Is there a way that I can make

$ make

default to:

$ make -j 8

?

Answer 1

Set the environment variable MAKEFLAGS to -j 8. If you are using csh or tcsh, you can do this with setenv MAKEFLAGS '-j 8'. If you are using bash, you can do this with export MAKEFLAGS='-j 8'. You might wish to put this command in your shell's start-up file, such as .cshrc or .bashrc (in your home directory).

Caution: Setting a default like this will apply to all invocations of make, including when you "make" a project other than your own or run a script that invokes make. If the project was not well designed, it might have problems when it is built with multiple jobs executing in parallel.

Answer 2

The answers suggesting alias make='make -j 8' are fine responses to your question.

However, I would recommend against doing that!

By all means, use an alias to save typing - but call it something other than make.

It might be OK for whatever project you're currently working on; but it's quite possible to write makefiles with missing dependencies which do not quite work properly with -j, and if you encounter such a thing, you'll be left wondering why the build fails in a mysterious way for you but works fine for other people.

(That said, if you do alias make, you can get bash to ignore the alias by typing \make.)

Answer 3

alias make="make -j 8", assuming bash shell