[distcc] win32 standalone binary

[Dan Kegel]

Jago Pearce wrote:
> I'd like to make it really easy for Windows users to aid linux users by 
> providing distcc as a service.
> 
> Is it possible to compile distcc on win32 so it can run as a standalone 
> .exe binary? Do you need something like MS VisualC++ to do this? 
> Alternatively is all that is needed is the cygwin compiled binary and 
> the cygwin .dll? How has progress been on getting this included? Can it 
> be installed as a service? I take it that it can be run at a low 
> priority so as to not interfere with other programs, but how?

I've been working on exactly what you're thinking of.
Here's where I am at the moment:
I have a script which will build just about any version of gcc and glibc
crosscompilers targeting Linux (any CPU type) plus distcc/distccd,
and sets up a masquerade directory which makes it easy to run
distcc.
The script runs successfully on Mac OS X, Cygwin, and Linux
for gcc-3.3.3/glibc-2.3.2.
I'm now trying to get it to also compile gcc-2.95.3 on Cygwin
and Mac OS X (it's built that on Linux for a long time already).
I'll be posting the script in a week or so.

On Windows, I had not yet investigated how to install the
compiler, but I think all
that's needed is to zip up the cygwin directory and unpack
it on each machine which wants to run the service
(or maybe it can be run off a shared network drive).
Might also need to put the cygwin DLL in the windows directory,
but I hope not.  (Note that if the user already has cygwin,
this can cause real conflicts.)

Then to set it up as a Win XP service, I was hoping there's
a simple wrapper that could start either cygwin init or distccd
directly as a Windows service.  A commercial wrapper is at
http://www.firedaemon.com/ and I seem to recall one came with
the NT resource kit.  Alternately, maybe cygwin init has already
had a wrapper built for it; I haven't looked.

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