[distcc] RE: Re: Contributing to distCC

[nadim khemir]

Hi,
Perochon Sebastien wrote:
> We are using Scons and its network cache. In this configuration, once a
> file is compiled (either locally or with distcc on distant computer), it
> is copied on a network cache. Then when someone else want to compile the
> same file, it is retrieved directly from the network cache.
> 
> It means that the first complete compilation could be done with distcc and
> then this compilation can be shared to everyone with the cache of Scons.

I don't know anything about scons network cache. But our build system, which
is rather close to scons except we have taken the rule based approach, also
knows how use a binary repository. This is not automatic and I don't think
it a good idea either. We have hundreds of programmers, caching all their
compilations is going to take lots of storage, network and search time.
Simply compiling the "original" source repository into an "original" binary
repository and using both is IMHO adequate. Still, and I know this is not
the place for talking build systems (there no such place unfortunately), I
think lots can be done to accelerate build at the configuration/code/build
system.

Get me right, the compilation time for the component I work on went from 75s
to 35s when using 3 boxes so I am happy about distcc. I am setting up 2
more boxes tomorrow and there is another group using linux at work I am
trying to convince them to share some cpu time with us.

We also have 3-400 windows users, that's a lot of idle cpu to harvest :-) I
simply have no idea how we are going to administer this and how our network
will handle it.

Cheers, Nadim

PS: who has been using distcc in cygwin and what results did you get?