Subject: remote job execution with make
To: None <current-users@netbsd.org>
From: Laine Stump <lainestump@rcn.com>
List: current-users
Date: 01/02/2000 01:33:28
I was just looking through the source to make and noticed that there are
hooks in job.c for remote execution of jobs. However, the "guts" are
missing - the functions called (Rmt_*()) are apparently declared in
rmt.h, which I don't see in the directory. The function names seem to
match functions in pmake, however (although the version of pmake source
I have doesn't have a rmt.h, it does have a rmt.c; /usr/include/rmt.h is
pretty obviously unrelated).

I've previously used remote execution (via pmake's customs) with gmake
to share large builds across multiple machines, and think it would be a
nice thing to have in NetBSD's native make. Admittedly, customs isn't
the ideal way to handle job distribution (it's inefficient, and security
is nearly nonexistent), but it's certainly better than nothing (and
could be improved upon / replaced with something better once the basic
mechanism was working)

My questions:

1) Is the remote job execution code in NetBSD's make actually being used
   by someone, or is it deprecated?

2) Is there a version of pmake around that is newer than the 2.1 that I
   have? Or is pmake itself also deprecated?

(Yes, I know (from painful experience) about all the potential troubles
with NFS encountered when exporting jobs to multiple machines from make
(although I haven't had the setup to do it since 1.3.3, so I don't know
if the same problems still exist). If nothing else, doing this helps to
expose NFS problems so they can be fixed! ;-)