Distributed Compilation & Parallel Build Tools for OS4
Date 21-Oct-2005 6:11:35
Topic: Software News
| It is a common problem. You have one or two AmigaOne systems plus four or five Amy'05 systems and the sources for your fantastic OS4 project are on one machine. You run your native compile and wait while your one system does all the work with the rest of them doing useless RC5-72 crunching. How can you get all those lazy systems working on your fantastic OS4 project instead?
The answer has been around for a long time on other systems and now that same capability comes to AmigaOS in the form of GNU make and the distcc package. Simply install the OS4 SDK on each system along with the distccd daemon and you have an instant super-compiler. With cross-compilers and distcc installed on Linux, MacOS, etc. you could have a super-duper-compiler but that functionality will have to wait a bit longer.
I've managed to port the parallel job capability of GNU make as well as the entire distcc package (client and server) to AmigaOS. While working on these tools I also discovered missing OS4 features, a bug in OS4 and clib2-ts limitations so these tools are being released in beta form for the time being. I'd appreciate any feedback but keep in mind some things just won't work 100% properly until updates of OS4 and clib2 are released.
Grab the tools from OS4 Depot and give them a try. Unless of course you don't want your compiles to go any faster... 
P.S. Parallel builds can eat up a lot of RAM so you might want to visit Revanche LLC and stock up on A1 RAM like I did. Thanks Kurt!
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