[distcc] Higher compression

[Matias D'Ambrosio]

 I have been using distcc for a couple of days with LZO compression,
but I have found it insufficient due to the very low bandwidth
available. The main system is a laptop with a serial port (10KB/sec)
connection to my main desktop which gives it access to the LAN, the
volunteer is connected through ethernet to the desktop, but obviously
the limit is the serial cable.
 Although the network speed is the current bottleneck, distcc is the
best option I have seen so far, since the laptop only has 32MB of RAM
and hence can't compile some files (OOM crashes). Compounded to that
is the fact that I use different linux distributions on my desktop and
laptop, and thus I have so far been using a virtual machine in my
desktop to compile, and then transferring the files to the laptop,
which is cumbersome to say the least.
 I have been doing some quick research and it appears 7z is the best
format (that is easily available, at least) with bzip2 a close second
(though not as good with object files). There is a 7z SDK with C
source and I might try to make that work with distcc, I have only
looked superficially at distcc's source so I don't know how easy this
would be, but I was curious to know if anybody is interested/working
in the same problem.
 I should also mention that the laptop is a celeron coppermine 500MHz,
so it has the processing power for 7z, and the volunteer is a duron
1400 with 256MB of RAM.
  Matias D'Ambrosio