Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!hubcap!Marshall
From: cline@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Marshall Cline)
Newsgroups: comp.parallel
Subject: Re: distributed make(1)?
Message-ID: <5498@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Date: 16 May 89 17:19:16 GMT
Sender: fpst@hubcap.clemson.edu
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Approved: parallel@hubcap.clemson.edu

In article <5486@hubcap.clemson.edu> brian@caen.engin.umich.edu (Brian Holtz) writes:
>Can anyone give me a pointer to literature on, or even an ftp
>target for, a distributed version of make?  GNU make spawns

Others have mentioned the make(1) under DYNIX (Sequent Balance, etc).
An interesting aside, however, is that spawning make(1)'s tasks in
parallel isn't always possible (ie: isn't always _correct_).

Ex: Suppose "A" depends on "B", and "B" depends on "C".
The make script might say:
	build "B" from "C"
	build "A" from "B"

The simplistic solution would be to hard-wire a "&" after each command
in the Makefile.  This will cause each to run asynchronously, which will
be disasterous ("A" might get built from the old "B", or from the new "B",
or worse yet, from a mixture).  The DYNIX make(1), as well as _any_
distributed Make which is correct, will force the above two commands
to run _sequentially_, perhaps on the same PE...  Other non-dependent
operations can naturally be run in parallel, on the same (asynchronously),
or on different (simultaneously) PEs...

The point is that, given that N files have to be "made", you may still
have to run each sequentially.  On the other hand, you may be able to
run all N at once; it all "depends" on the "dependency" tree...

Just an aside...
Marshall

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