Parallel Step Execution

[wrdouglass]

I'd like to see a mechanism to run 2 or more steps at the same time, with a way to eventually "wait" for them to be complete at some point before the script continues.

Such as:

Step 1: Fetch from SS "branch 1"
Step 2: Fetch from SS "branch 2"
Step 3: Wait for Step 1 completion
Step 4: Build branch 1
Step 5: Wait for Step 2 Completion
Step 6: build branch 2

So steps 1 & 2 operate simulataneously, step 3 waits for the successfully finish of Step 1, Step 4 then processes, Step 5 waits for Step 2 to finish (if it hasn't already) then Step 6 proceeds

It takes a large amount of time to fetch our branches (10-15 minutes, specifically for branch 2) which is basically wasted time since Branch 1 needs to be built before Branch 2 can be built (dependency) if they are done in succession.

I'm sure there are a lot of other relatively simple scenarios that could use the same approach to speed up the build process.