[distcc] distcc over slow net links

[Dag Wieers]

On Mon, 25 Aug 2003, Timothee Besset wrote:

> I'll need a little time before I can give you some numbers. I've only
> setup distccd on one of the remote machines, and disabled it after I saw
> that issue on small builds. I'll go over that stuff to get some numbers
> again.
> 
> My general idea was to run the compile on a closer faster machine, and to
> use whichever build is fully done first (compile and transfer). We use two
> compile slots instead of one, that's an opportunity cost. But since I'm
> the only Linux guy in the company, I have those machines for myself
> anyway. They have been nagging me about IncrediBuild on win32 for some
> time .. I have more CPU power I think .. but gcc is way slower than VC7 ..
> so I'm still loosing :-).

The way I thought Timothee meant it, was like this:

	Whenever a host has finished processing jobs and distcc (make) is 
	out of jobs but still waiting for results on some jobs. It could 
	resend the (already preprocessed) jobs to any idle machines and 
	use the result from the fastest machines that can deliver it. (and 
	finish the other ones)

Of course this means that the distcc instances have to have some shared 
knowledge about what jobs are still ongoing and access to preprocessed 
output.

But I like the idea, especially in environments where some of the servers 
in your cluster are sometimes used for heavy duty. If you're waiting, you 
might as well bet on another horse (especially when it is at no extra 
cost)

--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]