[oi-dev] illumos-gate, dmake and VM-farm question

[Jim Klimov]

Hello all,

   Now that I have a hammer and everything looks like a nail -
in that I've built a new home-NAS with cache and log on SSDs
(my first, heh) and over-NFS compilations should be faster
than previously possible on HDD-based rigs with VirtualBox
VMs and NFS remote compile nodes...

   So, I am wondering whether (and how?) the dmake used in the
illumos-gate compilation process can be used to distribute
the compilation load over several compute nodes? Namely, the
storage box is not a super-computer (an N54L) and much of its
CPU is spent on processing the data pool (pretty quick though),
but at home it is surrounded by a number of desktops which in
theory could each run a VirtualBox with OI inside and provide
their CPU time to take part in a distributed compilation of a
large project such as the gate. Previously I'd say this would
bottleneck on networked IO, now I hope this barrier is gone.

   Has anyone done that recently? Is the "d" in "dmake" used by
anyone in the community? Does the idea have its merits in i.e.
reduced compilation time? Should all building environments be
set up identically (arch, compiler, etc.) or what? How-to's? :)
Also, if such setups are used, are they "rigid" in the set of
predefined available compilation nodes which should all be up,
or just a subset of whichever ones are available can be used
dynamically (i.e. VMs are fired up on PCs with no immediate load
from users, and turned off in case of heavy load like gaming)?

Thanks,
//Jim Klimov