Re: [gentoo-soc] Project Proposal : GenCC for "Gentoo Community Compiling"

[Donnie Berkholz]

On 02:20 Tue 19 Feb     , Luca Barbato wrote:
> On 18/02/13 14:29, Antoine Pinsard wrote:
> > This is a very basic approach of the tool but I think it gives the main
> > idea of the projet. I would like to have your opinion on whether it
> > could be a gsoc project or not. And if it could, what backgrounds it
> > would require. I think this is much more about networking and security
> > than compiling (though it would require at least a basic knowledge of
> > distcc).
>
> You should study what had been done in the past (distcc, icecream etc)
> and figure out what they are lacking and why nobody is using them on a
> geographic network.
>
> Then you have the problem of building a ring of trust strong enough.
>
> And eventually you have to come to term with how compilers behave
> differently depending on a number of situations.
>
> Looks a quite good research project but I warn you not to expect quick
> or easy results.

I had a very similar idea around 10 years ago and spent a while looking 
into the feasibility of it, along with a former Gentoo developer. We 
called the idea p2pcc and created a Sourceforge project 
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/p2pcc/> but the research showed that it 
wasn't worthwhile at the time to write any code.

The problem in the end is that it wasn't really feasible on anything 
besides a 100 MBit *minimum* connection with low latency, otherwise you 
spent more time transferring files around than compiling them.

Today you could imagine it being potentially interesting if you think 
about it in the context of public (or private) cloud living in shared 
datacenters.

-- 
Thanks,
Donnie

Donnie Berkholz
Summer of Code Admin, Gentoo Linux <http://dberkholz.com>
Council Member / Sr. Developer, Gentoo Linux <http://dberkholz.com>
Analyst, RedMonk <http://redmonk.com/dberkholz/>