[distcc] What is the best way to separate compiler and assembler phases?

[Stuart D. Gathman]

Having lurked for a while, I realize that not all compilers produce assembler 
code as an intermediate step.  Some directly produce an object file.  But for 
those that produce assembler as an intermediate, what is the best way to run 
the compiler and assembler on different machines - while keeping the overall 
distcc architecture?

Also, the GNU compiler supports piping preprocessed source into the compiler 
via stdin - avoiding having to produce an entire temp file before beginning 
the compile.  Similarly, the compiler output goes to stdout, and can be piped 
directly to the assembler.  How should this be supported in distcc?

Perhaps distcc could recognize the -pipe option to enable these features.