View source for Distcc mozilla tutorial

=What is this?=

This is a tutorial to get distcc to compile Mozilla Firefox on Windows using cygwin.

=Requirements=

# Window machines. For distcc to be of any use, there should be at least 2 machines
# Cygwin. You will need gcc to build distcc. We build using gcc-3.4.4
# [http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Windows_Build_Prerequisites Mozilla requirements]
# Patience

=Building distcc=

Checkout, build, and install the distcc source

 svn co svn://cdot.senecac.on.ca/distcc/trunk
 cd trunk && ./configure && make && make install

Checkout the Mozilla source. If you are using the latest version of trunk, than you are fine. If you are building 2.0.0.3 or below, you need to apply a silly [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=374563 patch].

=MOZCONFIG=

Currently, distcc does not transmit debug .pdb files (i.e., it can only send back one file). So you cannot currently do a debug build.  Here is a sample MOZCONFIG file. All you need to do is modify the object directory (MOZ_OBJDIR).

'''Note the last line''', which is required for any MOZCONFIG file that wants to build using distcc.

 mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=/cygdrive/c/home/cesar/mozobj
 ac_add_options --enable-application=browser
 ac_add_options --enable-optimize
 ac_add_options --disable-debug
 ac_add_options --enable-debugger-info-modules=no
 mk_add_options MOZ_CO_PROJECT=browser
 mk_add_options MOZ_MAKE_FLAGS="CC='distcc cl' CXX='distcc cl' -j4"

-j4 is quite important. According to the man page, you should set the number of jobs equal to the number of all cpus (or cores) + 2.

=Environment=

The only required environment variable is '''DISTCC_CL_HOSTS''', which contains a space delimited list of all slave machines.  You must set this variable on the master machine (the machine that contains the source code).

 export DISTCC_CL_HOSTS="localhost 10.0.0.2 10.0.0.4"
<!--
This section explains some useful environment variables that you can use.

Distcc has a few environment variables. The most useful are listed here, which are all set on the master computer. The master machine is the machine in which the mozilla directory is located.

<dl>
<dt> DISTCC_CL_HOSTS
<dd>the ip addresses of the slave machines. Usually localhost is the first host. '''THIS IS REQUIRED'''

''Example :'' export DISTCC_CL_HOSTS="localhost 10.0.0.2 10.0.0.4"

<dt>DISTCC_VERBOSE
<dd>Verbose output.

Values : 1 for true

<dt>DISTCC_LOG
<dd>A path to a file that distcc will output to

<dt>DISTCC_FALLBACK
<dd>Whether distcc should fallback to localhost if it fails to find a slave. The compile will fail if fallback are disabled and no slaves are found.

Values : 1 for allow fallback
</dl>
-->

=Distcc Daemon=

Start the distcc daemon.  The only thing you need to change is who is allowed to use the daemon.  You can use a space-delimited list of IP addresses, or specify the CIDR mask of an entire subnet.

 distccd --allow '10.0.0.0/24' --daemon