Installation instructions for distcc                  -*- indented-text -*-


distcc is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version. distcc comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY,
for details see the licence.

If you find distcc useful, please consider donating to the Samba
Foundation to help cover our costs in publishing free
software. (Please mention distcc in your donation.)

Please report any problems to distcc@lists.samba.org.


Prerequisites
-------------

To build distcc you need

   GNU Make
   A C compiler

You can optionally have

   libpopt
        
     If this is not found on your system, it will be statically linked in.

   GTK+ >=2.0

     To produce a GNOME graphical compilation monitor.  At the moment
     libgnome is not needed, just libgtk+-2.0.

   Python >=2.0
        
     To run the test suite with "make maintainer-check" or the
     benchmark.

   linuxdoc SGML tools

     To rebuild the documentation from its SGML source.  

   autoconf >=2.5

     To rebuild the configure scripts if you edit configure.ac.


Preliminaries
-------------

distcc can be installed and used without requiring root access.
Adjust directories appropriately when installing.


Compiling distcc
----------------

Compilation follows the standard GNU pattern:

  $ ./configure --help
  $ ./configure 
  $ make
  # make install

Note that the default GNU "sysconfdir" is /usr/local/etc.  You may
want to change this to /etc.

  $ ./configure --sysconfdir=/etc

You can set an installation prefix if you want to put distcc in /opt:

  $ ./configure --prefix=/opt/distcc/

distcc needs to be installed on all client and server machines.


Starting the daemon
-------------------

This stage is only required if you want to run distcc over TCP
sockets, rather than SSH connections.  TCP is faster but less secure
and should only be used on trusted networks.

In TCP mode distccd can run either from inetd or as a standalone
daemon.  Running standalone is recommended.

To run standalone, run a command like this, either from the command
line or from the system startup scripts.

  distccd --daemon

If the daemon is started from an rc script, then make sure that it
sees a PATH setting which can find any compilers installed in
nonstandard directories.

You should create a "distcc" account on server machines so that distcc
can run with minimal privilege.  It is not necessary for this account
to own any files or have a home directory.  If this account doesn't
exist, distccd uses the "nobody" account.

By default distccd writes messages to the "daemon" syslog, which
typically ends up in /var/log/messages or /var/log/daemon.

You can set IP-based access control using the --allow and --listen
options, in either inetd or daemon mode:

  distccd --allow 10.4.20.0/24 

distccd does not need to run on machines that will only act as
clients.

See the manual for more information.


Set up the host list
--------------------

On the client machines, store a list of servers names in
~/.distcc/hosts.  If you're using TCP connections, it should look like
this:

  localhost red green blue

For SSH connections

  localhost @red @green @blue

The hosts should be listed in descending order of speed.  localhost
should normally be first, unless it is signficantly slower than
another machine.

See the manual for more information.


Create the masquerade directories
---------------------------------

The easiest way to use distcc is in "masquerade" mode, where it is
installed on the path to "catch" calls to the compiler and redirect
them over the network.  Other options are discussed in the manual.

For instance, you could create the directory named /usr/lib/distcc/bin
and populate it with links.
	  
# mkdir /usr/lib/distcc/bin
# cd /usr/lib/distcc/bin
# ln -s ../../../bin/distcc gcc
# ln -s ../../../bin/distcc cc
# ln -s ../../../bin/distcc g++
# ln -s ../../../bin/distcc c++

Do this for all compiler names that you use.

Then, to use distcc, a user just needs to put the directory
/usr/lib/distcc/bin early in the PATH and distcc will handle the rest.
 
  export PATH=/usr/lib/distcc/bin:$PATH


Use with ccache
---------------

The best way to use is to set up a similar masquerade directory for
ccache, and put it on the path before distcc.


Complete the survey
-------------------

Once you have distcc working for your own application, please complete
and mail in the survey in survyey.txt.
