Distcc mozilla tutorial

What is this?

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

Requirements

1. Window machines. For distcc to be of any use, there should be at least 2 machines
2. Cygwin. You will need gcc to build distcc. We built using gcc-3.4.4
3. Mozilla requirements
4. Patience

MOZCONFIG

Currently, distcc does not transmit debug .pdb files. 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"

Environment

This section explains some usefull environment variables that you can use.

Master

The master machine is the machine in which the mozilla directory is located.

DISTCC_CL_HOSTS

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

DISTCC_VERBOSE

Verbose output. Values : 1 for true

DISTCC_LOG

A path to a file that distcc will output to

DISTCC_FALLBACK

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

Slave

The slaves take preprocessed file and send back the object file. They do not need the source code.

DISTCC_CL_HOSTS

the ip addresses of the slave machines. Usually localhost is the first host. Example : export DISTCC_CL_HOSTS="localhost 10.0.0.2 10.0.0.4

Optional

DISTCC_FALLBACK