Audience
DevOps professionals wanting a solution to speed up large codebase compilations by leveraging idle compute resources across their network
About distcc
Distcc is a distributed compilation system that accelerates C, C++, Objective-C, and Fortran builds by offloading compile jobs across multiple networked machines. It integrates seamlessly with GCC and Clang toolchains, transparently intercepting compiler calls and redistributing them to remote daemons while preserving optimization flags, include paths, and dependency tracking. Its client-server architecture features a lightweight listener that manages job queues, prioritizes local compilation when needed, and automatically detects available hosts via simple configuration or DNS. Distcc supports cross-compilation environments, SSH tunneling for secure clusters, blacklisting of unreliable servers, and integration with build systems like Make, CMake and Ninja. Monitoring tools provide real-time statistics on job distribution and throughput, and compatibility with compilation databases (compdb) enables granular control over distributed workloads.