[distcc] Suggestion about host selection

[thomas at schuerger.com]

Hi,

when given a list of hosts in DISTCC_HOSTS, e.g.

DISTCC_HOSTS="host1/6 host2/2 host3/3"

The documentation states that the hosts are given priority as specified,
so host1 is the preferred host. I looked at the distcc code and was
surprised to find that this "list of preference" is interpreted somewhat
differently than I expected.

Each time distcc looks for an available host (or rather, a slot on an
available host), it scans the list of slots from left to right and uses
the first free slot it finds.

The host list above actually means (hostname_slotnumber):

host1_1 host2_1 host3_1 host1_2 host2_2 host3_2 host1_3 host3_3 host1_4
host1_5 host1_6

I had expected this:

host1_1 host1_2 host1_3 host1_4 host1_5 host1_6 host2_1 host2_2 host3_1
host3_2 host3_3

It would be good if there was an option in distcc to change the
host selection code so that the second interpretation is used. And it
would be good if this selection would be covered a little more
detailed in the documentation.


Greetings,
Thomas.