distmake
a distributed make program

Quick start guide :

Building instructions

1. download distmake
2. uncompress and untar the source package (if required)
3. run configure & make :

./configure --prefix=/some/net/export
make 
make install

where /some/net/export is a shared, networked directory

Configuration

distmake reads build servers list from $HOME/.bldhosts (1 server per line; line beginning with # or a space will be ignored). If a build machine has several CPUs, you may duplicate the machine name in this file.

E.g.: if you have 3 build servers on your network (bldserv-a, bldserv-b and bldserv-c, and bldserv-b is a dual CPUs server:

bldserv-a
bldserv-b
bldserv-b
bldserv-c

Start the make process with /some/net/export/distmake -j <nslots>, where <nslots> is the maximal number of parallel tasks allowed to start (typically, you will set it as the number of line in your bldhosts file).

Build servers requirements

The build servers must meet the following requirements:

1. The rpc.bldserver daemon must be running on all build servers. A /etc/init.d startup shell script is provided to start this deamon when the computer boots. This script is disabled by default on all runlevels.

2. time on build servers must be synchronized. (NTP protocol is a good choice here).

3. distmake must be installed on a shared area and available on all build servers.

4. the source tree must also be available on all build servers in the same logical path (same "mount point").