Compiling Packages

[Scott W]

Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P. wrote:
> Kris Kennaway wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, Mar 10, 2004 at 05:44:14AM -0500, Gerard Seibert wrote:
>>  
>>
>>> A few days ago, I posted that packages are not as current as ports 
>>> are on
>>> FreeBSD. When I made that statement, someone, I forget whom, claimed 
>>> that
>>> they need more machines to compile the code and wanted to know if I 
>>> wanted
>>> to donate, or words to that affect.
>>>
>>> In any case, would that refer to donating an actual computer, or simply
>>> donating computer time? I have three computers, only one running FreeBSD
>>> at this time. I certainly am not going to give away any of my computers,
>>> but I would be willing to share time on one of them if that would help.
>>>   
>>
>>
>> What would be useful is multiple (e.g. at least half a dozen) fast
>> machines with good network connectivity.  Individual machines aren't
>> much help, I'm afraid.  Thanks for the offer though.
>>
>> kris
>>  
>>
> 
> Sorry to jump in both uninvited, and late...and,
> to boot, with just so much theoretical hogwash;
> I thought it might be of interest to the discussion
> at hand.
> 
> I've been getting more interested in clustering.
> With all the "hoopla" (as it were) about BSD clusters,
> would one fast cluster do this task?  (i.e., could
> you build packages over MPI?)
> 
> Not that I have 'em, but my server farm is growing
> faster than my hosting business... and I'm hoping
> to get situated with a faster connection soon.
> 
> Heh, if it can work that way, maybe we should beg
> from Matt or Brooks? :-D
> 
> Kevin Kinsey
> DaleCo, S.P.
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> 

Unless something _huge_ has changed fundamentally in the way MPI is 
implemented- nope, it wouldn't help, without huge amounts of work.  Did 
a development project years ago that looked like a cluster would be 
useful, but it was for an existing app- which would have been quite a 
bit of work to segregate tasks into easily distributed 'chunks.'
Something along the lines of 'distcc' would likely be of more immediate 
use for a compile farm...

Scott