Reduce C/C++ Compile Time With distcc

An anonymous reader writes "Some people prefer the convenience of pre-compiled binaries in the form of RPMs or other such installer methods. But this can be a false economy, especially with programs that are used frequently: precompiled binaries will never run as quickly as those compiled with the right optimizations for your own machine. If you use a distributed compiler, you get the best of both worlds: fast compile and faster apps. This article shows you the benifits of using distcc, a distributed C compiler based on gcc, that gives you significant productivity gains."

Comments

false savings

[Yojimbo-San]

Compare the speed cost of loading a "generic" binary to an "optimised" one, multiply by the number of times you load that binary.

Then look at the time required to compile the optimised copy.

How often, in the lifetime of a particular version of a binary, do you really need to reload it?

The promise of distcc is closely related to source distributions like Gentoo. The benefit is overstated. Don't waste your time.

Re:Less and less necessary in the future

[ThisNukes4u]

There are still enterprise uses where coders need to compile huge projects from scratch that take too long on a single workstation. Instead of that build taking 15 minutes on a single workstation, they can tap the power of all the workstations and build it in a few minutes or perhaps even seconds.

Obligatory "No"

[timotten]

precompiled binaries will never run as quickly as those compiled with the right optimizations for your own machine

A straw man. Precompiled binaries may have been compiled with the optimal settings for your machine, and binaries which you compile may not have the optimal settings. Identifying the optimal settings can actually be non-trivial. Source-based distributions are not necessarily the best fix to the 'one-size-fits-all' approach used by some distro's.