In software development, distcc is a tool for speeding up

compilation Compilation may refer to: *In computer programming, the translation of source code into object code by a compiler **Compilation error **Compilation unit *Product bundling, a marketing strategy used to sell multiple products *Compilation thesis M ...

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...

by using

distributed computing A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed computing is a field of computer sci ...

over a

computer network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...

. With the right configuration, distcc can dramatically reduce a project's compilation time. It is designed to work with the C programming language (and its derivatives like

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

and

Objective-C Objective-C is a general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to the C programming language. Originally developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love in the early 1980s, it was selected by NeXT for its NeXT ...

) and to use GCC as its backend, though it provides varying degrees of compatibility with the

Intel C++ Compiler Intel oneAPI DPC++/C++ Compiler and Intel C++ Compiler Classic are Intel’s C, C++, SYCL, and Data Parallel C++ (DPC++) compilers for Intel processor-based systems, available for Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems. Overview Intel ...

and Sun Microsystems'

Sun Studio Compiler Suite Oracle Developer Studio, formerly named Oracle Solaris Studio, Sun Studio, Sun WorkShop, Forte Developer, and SunPro Compilers, is Oracle Corporation's flagship software development product for the Solaris and Linux operating systems. It includ ...

. Distributed under the terms of the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...

, distcc is

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

Design

distcc is designed to speed up compilation by taking advantage of unused processing power on other computers. A machine with distcc installed can send code to be compiled across the network to a computer which has the distccd

daemon Daimon or Daemon (Ancient Greek: , "god", "godlike", "power", "fate") originally referred to a lesser deity or guiding spirit such as the daimons of ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology and of later Hellenistic religion and Hell ...

and a compatible compiler installed. distcc works as an agent for the compiler. A distcc daemon has to run on each of the participating machines. The originating machine invokes a

preprocessor In computer science, a preprocessor (or precompiler) is a program that processes its input data to produce output that is used as input in another program. The output is said to be a preprocessed form of the input data, which is often used by so ...

to handle header files, preprocessing directives (such as #ifdef) and the source files and sends the preprocessed source to other machines over the network via TCP either unencrypted or using

SSH The Secure Shell Protocol (SSH) is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. Its most notable applications are remote login and command-line execution. SSH applications are based on ...

. Remote machines compile those source files without any local dependencies (such as libraries, header files or macro definitions) to object files and send them back to the originator for further compilation. distcc version 3 supports a mode (called ''pump mode'') in which included header files are sent to the remote machines, so that preprocessing is also distributed.

Related software

distcc was an option for distributed builds in versions of Apple's

Xcode Xcode is Apple's integrated development environment (IDE) for macOS, used to develop software for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS. It was initially released in late 2003; the latest stable release is version 14.2, released on December 13, ...

development suite prior to 4.3, but has been removed.

Goma

Goma is a similar tool made by google to replace distcc & ccache in compiling chromium.

Ccache

ccache is another tool aimed to reduce the compilation time by caching the output from the same input source files. ccache can also use distcc as its backend, providing distributed compiling if it is not already cached by using the CCACHE_PREFIX environment variable.

Icecream

icecream was created by SUSE based on distcc. Like distcc, icecream takes compile jobs from a build and distributes it among remote machines allowing a parallel build. But unlike distcc, icecream uses a central server that dynamically schedules the compile jobs to the fastest free server.

References

External links

* {{Official website, https://github.com/distcc
google distcc pump mode

DMUCS – a Distributed Multi-User Compilation System

DistCC Enterprise Load Balancer
Compiling tools Free computer programming tools Cross-platform software Unix programming tools