What does BR2_JLEVEL=2 do in Buildroot?

Question

I have set the BR2_JLEVEL to 2 ; Not sure how this option works in buildroot ? can somebody give details on how it works in buildroot as I am not seeing improvements in my build timing.

Answer 1

BR2_JLEVEL is equivalent to running 'Make' with the option -j.

The man-page for 'make' states

-j [jobs], --jobs[=jobs]

Specifies the number of jobs (commands) to run simultaneously. If there is more than one -j option, the last one is effective. If the -j option is given without an argument, make will not limit the number of jobs that can run simultaneously.

So running with BR2_JLEVEL=2 will start two compile processes at the same time, and thus speedup compile time, especially if you have more than one CPU.