What I Learned Today
Distributing Compilation with distcc

Distcc has a client and a server.  To build the client, you need python-devel package.

On server nodes:

  • distccd —daemon —allow 192.168.246.102

On client:

  • create ~/.distcc/hosts file with IP addresses of all server nodes
  • run distcc —show-hosts to verify it has a list
  • use make -j8 CC=distcc to build something

I had to build the distcc client/server code from source on a machine with the python development package, but after that I could “make install” on another machine to install the client.  Using RPMs I could install the server, but not the client. The client may only require python if you use the “pump” command, but I was getting errors even without it.