[distcc] Web based compiling farm

[Antenore Gatta]

Hi all, 
         First of all sorry, I don't have strong english skills.
I was joined in the distcc mailing list in the last November because
I'm interested to use distcc as a building system backend for a
compiling farm.

My goal is to create a distributed system for compiling software on
demand for not experienced users.
In the first stage I'd like to have a web based form where the user
can choose from a software list and between some different platforms
(amd, intel, sparc, arm, ..., etc.) after N minutes user should be
able to download a tar archive with the platform optimized compiled
version.

In the second stage this system should be able to find dependencies
and compiling them in the same way.

In my secret dreams (a madness!), besides previously described goals,
I'd like to have a system to compile a complete Linux From Scratch
system with an iso image as result.

I've started some test with some others people who live faraway from
me and we have found a great problem.

Every users in exchange for compiled software should lend their CPU
time, so, here finally the questions:
How can I know how far are every hosts between them?
How can I dinamically group some hosts considering the "network distance"?

I tried with ICMP and anycast but both doesn't pass trough every routers.
We have obtained some result sending a little image (png) via ssh
counting the seconds, b ut sometimes the routing change unexpectedly.
Perhaps using the same distcc socket the routing should be the same
(except for router/backbone problems).

Please do you have an idea about this?
Should be possible and usefull to implement a network distance
calculator inside distcc?

Thank you very much.
Regards,
Antenore.