[distcc] compilation refusal on excessive load.

[Dobes Vandermeer]

On 12/2/05, Rob Harris <Rob.Harris at solipsys.com> wrote:
>
> Hola. A bunch of us are using distcc here to cut down the compile time
> of our development efforts. It has literally saved us days of time
> waiting on gcc.
>
> One question though--and it may already have been answered (and if so,
> my apologies, point and flame.) Is there a way you can add a hosts
> parameter such that if the load of a machine is too high, a distccd will
> refuse to the compile the code and the client distcc will pass the code
> to the next system in the hosts line?
>
> Basically, we have a shared resource here of about 26 machines. People
> use 5 machines at a time for testing. We like using distcc, but we don't
> want to slam anyone's cpu in a performance test, nor do we want to be
> constantly be be rewriting DISTCC_HOSTS. It'd be great if you could say
> something like DISTCC_HOSTS = "localhost foo<1.0 bar<4.0", etc.

Maybe you can shut down the distcc server while you run the the tests;
distcc will automatically skip servers that are not running.

Of course, this may turn out to be error-prone, but if a few hosts are
left offline by accident it isn't a catastrophe or anything.