[distcc] compile without localhost?

[Martin Pool]

On 25 Nov 2003, Daniel Johansson <donnex at donnex.net> wrote:
> Hi, I've got a question about distcc. At home I got one laptop and a 
> bunch of slower servers and one faster, barton 2500+.  I am running 
> FreeBSD and I heard that the only thing that could be compiled with -jX 
> is the source tree, moast of the ports will generate errors. 

Do you mean the FreeBSD source tree?

I don't know about FreeBSD ports, but about 75% of the free software
trees around there are OK to build with -j.  Some of the rest will
force -j1, and the others will sometimes fail.

Gentoo's portage forces -j1 for trees that need it, which seems like a
good idea.  Even better is to find and fix the bugs...

> So I wonder if it is a good idea, any benefits?, to use
> DISTCC_HOSTS="IP_TO_MY_BARTON_SERVER" and not localhost or any other
> nodes? Just to let the faster server compile instead of doing it on
> my laptop or on the slower servers. This will work with all programs
> and ports I think, I do not use -jX, all I want is to compile
> everything, almoast, at the fast server instead of doing it localy.

Yes, that's fine.  Or you can even list all of the machines, and
they'll be used for parallel builds.  But if they're much slower then
it may not be worthwhile.

> Any thoughts about this? Is it a good idea/solution?

Yes, even with -j1 building on a faster machine can be a big win.
I've regularly seen 2x speedups moving work from my laptop to a
desktop.

-- 
Martin 
                               linux.conf.au -- Adelaide, January 2004