re-ordering "make subsequentcheck" for performance

Hi

I'm sitting here with a 6-core monster of a machine, and watching it 
idle away
(top says 90% idle, iotop says basically nothing is happening)
as it gently processes the [SCK] stages of "make subsequentcheck".

I've tried cranking up --with-max-jobs to 18 and --with-num-cpus to 12, 
but that doesn't seem to be helping much.

I think what might be happening is that longer-running tests are towards 
the end, and I'm suffering from a "long tail" effect.
I think it ought to be possible to speed this up a bit by re-ordering 
the longer running stuff towards the beginning.

Where in the build scripts should I look to change this ordering?

Thanks, Noel Grandin

Disclaimer: http://www.peralex.com/disclaimer.html