Crosscompiling with distcc?

lurid · Guru Joined: 12 Mar 2003 Posts: 595 Location: Florida

Ok, heres my situation. I had two AMD Athlons (mine and my girlfriends) and I used distcc to compile everything between the two. I'd use both machines to compile on my computer and build packages, then install them with emerge -k on her machine. Well, recently I was just handed a P4 2.4 ghz (d00t!) and I dig it, but now my girlfriend has to compile all her all own stuff, which is no big deal, but definatly not as convient as it once was.

So. In the distcc guide there is a brief section on crosscompiling, but nothing really in depth. Is this possible on Gentoo or no? Do I need to install a different gcc, or install it in a special way that'll make it be able to crosscompile? I know I won't be able to just build packages for her anymore, but if she can use distcc the things she does compile will go much faster. And I wouldn't mine adding an extra ghz to my compiles either. ;)
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deepthought · Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2004 12:55 pm Post subject:

You might run

lurid · Guru Joined: 12 Mar 2003 Posts: 595 Location: Florida

You can't compile something -march=athlon-xp on a P4, can you? Or can you compile it, just not run it on a P4? Also does distcc export CFLAGS? If my machine (p4) is compiling code that distcc sent it from my girlfriends machine (athlon), whos CFLAGS get used?

Besides which, compiling packages for her on my machine is redundant now. I did that before because I had an Athlon too, so when I compiled for me, I could easily just pop the packages on her machine. Now they have to be compiled seperatly because of the arch difference. I just want to use distcc so her compiles aren't as time consuming (since shes used to a weekly emerge -u world taking about 5 minutes ;)
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Nebvin · Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2004 8:06 pm Post subject:

you wont have to worry, distcc will send the proper cflags and everything to the distcc host. I use distcc with a mixture of intel and amd processors and it works.
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deepthought · Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2004 9:14 am Post subject:

I think that you can -- compiling the package (and creating a binary tbz2 ONLY) should definitely work. What might happen is that the tests many packages compile and run may fail; but I'm not sure about that. You possibly can toggle this behaviour with configure, but since emerge does that on your behalf, it might be tricky.

Did you look on the forums for cross-compilation howtos?

Regards,
Alexander
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lurid · Guru Joined: 12 Mar 2003 Posts: 595 Location: Florida

Well, all the stuff I've found is for real crosscompiling, like with a ppc or sparc. ;) I guess CFLAGS are the only thing thats really holding this all back. I'd hate to just compile for i686, but that'd work on both machines.
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deepthought · Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2004 6:58 pm Post subject:

OTOH, you could use CFLAGS which are compatible for both boxes

<ducks>...

Regards,
Alexander
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Auka · Posted: Tue Feb 24, 2004 8:17 pm Post subject:

This will work just fine - regardles of your CFLAGS and without anything to worry except for having the same comiler versions on all machines.

I've had various machines mixed in my distcc environment so far: Athlon XP, Pentium II, Pentium III and IV, AMD K6-II...the only thing that I didn't try jet (but soon will) is adding my Sparc to that list. :wink:

distcc rules.

bakkus · n00b Joined: 17 Dec 2002 Posts: 33

Both your AMD and P¤ are i686 CPUs.
Even more important, they're still both based on the ix86 architecture.
Crosscompiling is only for compiling between different architectures, such as compiling SPARC stuff on an x86.
Don't worry, your AMD will generate perfect P4 code, and vice versa. DistCC also takes care of all the flag settings according to what is needed for the target machine, so don't worry about it.