[distcc] Finding peers: zeroconf/rendezvous?

[Bret Mogilefsky]

Hi,

I read the FAQ entry titled "Central controller?" and it makes sense to
me.  However, I think it's still a pain in the butt to manage making all
willing clients aware of each other, particularly in a large organization.
The FAQ entry concludes with:

"Having a centralized way to tell all clients about willing volunteers
might be nice. Using either round-robin DNS records, or DNS SRV records,
or SLP (Service Location Protocol) may achieve most of the benefits
without needing to write too much new code."

Is there any reason not to use Apple's zeroconf implementation (aka
Rendezvous under OS X) to help a distcc client find willing peers?
Zeroconf/Rendezvous works by doing a multicast DNS (mDNS) query.
Zeroconf-aware services listen for a query that applies to them, and
issues a response. There are various bits in the protocol to ensure that
spurious queries and repeated queries are kept to a minimum.  There's no
central server, no single point of failure, no administration requirement,
etc.  Apple's touting it as their replacement for Appletalk.

They've open-sourced a zeroconf mDNS implementation under the APSL (which
I believe is now compatible with the GPL).  It's suitable for embedding in
applications, which in this case would be distccd.  Their Rendezvous page
is here:
http://developer.apple.com/darwin/projects/rendezvous/

Has anyone looked at/thought about this already?  I think this would be a
valuable addition to distcc...


Bret