[distcc] distcc problems...

[Martin Pool]

On 21 Mar 2004, Dan Kegel <dank at kegel.com> wrote:
> Martin Pool wrote:
> >>IMHO this also means that using files to share state information
> >>is probably only going to get us so far.  It may be time to think
> >>of using a daemon to do what has been done with state files in
> >>DISTCC_DIR so far.  Yeah, this would be harder to use, but for a
> >>few installations, it might be a worthwhile option.
> >
> >I don't think it needs to be harder to use, but it will need some more
> >coding and some design work.
> >
> >A daemon that knew about the state of all processes would allow you to
> >centrally monitor all compilations by all users on all machines, which
> >might be quite nice in some ways.  However, you don't necessarily want
> >that information to all be public.  How should it know who to publish
> >the information to?
> 
> You could use a Unix domain socket and send an
> SCM_RIGHTS or SCM_CREDENTIALS message with sendmsg.
> This is used e.g. by http://dovecot.procontrol.fi/ 's server
> for similar reasons.  Cygwin doesn't support it last I checked,
> so you'd want to be able to fall back at configure time
> to the files.

I think if we used a Unix socket it would be enough to just let people
set the file permissions as they wish.  However, there are several
problems with this:

It would not tickle NFS bugs, but it would not work on NFS at all
either.  You would not be able to see any compilations running on
other machines.  If I'm going to change the way the monitor works, I
would rather support better cross-machine views.

As you say, it is just architecturally impossible on Windows.  Aside
from the problems of naming and access control it might be better to
use an inet socket.  Even then, naming might be solved by writing the
server's address into the DISTCC_DIR.

On a network of a few machines I would like the monitor to globally
view all the running jobs by all users on all machines.  Other people
might want to monitor that too.  That probably implies either a
broadcast/multicast setup, or a central daemon that retransmits the
notifications.

-- 
Martin 
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