[distcc] On Style - the hosts file

[logic at jrlogic.dyndns.org]

>
> Hi Daniel,
>
> [Jean Delvare]
>> I would also question the interest of such an option. Was there a
>> significant improvement when compared with a fully randomized
>> distribution? I would think that a more simple rule would be not to
>> randomize the first host of the list and start randomizing after that.
>> Wouldn't it be sufficient?
>
> [Daniel Kegel]
>> Any number of approaches would do.   I didn't want to force
>> randomization down anyone's throat, so I made it an option.
>
> I do not discuss the fact that not everyone wants host randomization, so
> it has to be left as an option to the user. I was merely asking what
> granularity was needed for this option. I would myself be happy with a
> simple switch (randomize all slots or none), but it looks like other
> people have other needs (like randomizing a part only of the list). My
> question was, how sure are we that such a granularity is needed? If it
> turns out not to bring any significant improvement, then maybe the
> simple switch approach is sufficient - and it solves the point
> altogether (although in this case I would still suggest that localhost
> as the first entry of the list is considered differently, i.e. is never
> randomized for the sake of configure scripts).

If you want my vote, as an end user, we would love to have randomization
on by default. Since distcc eschews the use of a central coordinator, this
would be the next-best thing. We have a team of over 12 programmers
regularly using distcc to build the project. Of course we could write a
script to randomize host files, but in the grand scheme of things,
scripting for a compile farm is at the bottom of the stack of things to
do.