KDevelop hangs during C++ build on ARM Odroid N2

I have been using Hardkernel’s new Odroid N2 to develop a computer vision system with multiple Basler USB3 cameras. I have been using KDevelop on the Odroid to engineer the C++ code and in general all has been going very well (the Odroid N2 is a fantastic device). I did however hit an occasional problem where KDevelop would cause the Odroid to ‘hang’ during a build – especially when re-building a lot of files.

On investigation it seemed like KDevelop was just using up too much memory and putting the Odroid into a very bad place, sometimes the system would free up after a (long) period of time but most often it wouldn’t, it just ground to a halt thrashing memory (I presume). I am using the boost libraries and I think that a lot of IDEs and build systems have problems with boost as it’s very big! (Clion does especially!)

Anyway the solution was to limit how many parallel build instances (or jobs as it calls them) that KDevelop can run, to do this open the ‘Project / Open Configuration..’ menu and click on the ‘Make’ tab in the left-hand column, now check the ‘Override number of simultaneous jobs’ checkbox, and enter a number in the ‘Number of Simultaneous jobs’ box. A value of 3 works well for me, the builds are a little slower but no longer hang the system! I might try increasing it to see if I can get away with quicker builds…