distcc portable (for Windows)

Program: distcc (using cygwin)

License: Open Source/GPL (both)

Description: Distributed C compiler (unix tool), that needs cygwin (linux-like enviroment) to run under windows

Website: http://distcc.samba.org/ + http://www.cygwin.com/

Other: further information see below

________________________________________

Hello everybody!

I want to request a portable version of distcc.

I've allready did some research, but i'm not familiar enough with portableApps.com to develop this app by myself, at this moment.

The idea in short:
Execute an app on one (or more) Windows mashine(s) to borrow CPU-Power to compile C code for another host.
On Unix/Linux Computers this is no problem, using distcc. On Windows mashines you'll need cygwin, which is way to big and not portable without some modifications.
This project shuold create a smaller and portable solution.

More details:
Distcc is originaly an unix app for distributed c compiling across all (unix) computers in your network.
It can be used, for example, to greatly speed up the installation of gentoo linux, because gentoo is a distribution you'll compile yourself from source.

Using the CPU-Power of Windows-Mashines in the Network would be a great advantage, even more if this solution would be portable. So you could "borrow" the CPU-Power of your little sisters Windows-PC without making any changes to the system.

But as i said, distcc is a unix tool. So it won't run under windows natively.

Enough introduction, here are some facts that could be helpfull creating a Windows-Compatible distcc-portable:

• distcc runs within cygwin (linux-like enviroment for windows)
• cygwin offers the gcc compiler needed by distcc
• cygwin can be made portable
  How is described here: http://sites.google.com/site/devinsezer/Home/software/portable-cygwin
  This howto allready describes the probably most difficult part because all registry handling will be done there.
• cygwin is verry big because it is a whole linux-like enviroment.
  It gives you a lot of abilitys, you'll have with linux, but which you wouldn't need for distcc.
  So it has to be checked if there are possibilitys to reduce size by removing files, that aren't needet for running distcc.
  Using cygwin-portable without making it much smaller wouldn't be a acceptable solution for this project since you'll need it only for distcc and for nothing else. The whole cygwin project is to much for "just borrow some CPU-power for a moment"
• cygwin and distcc are open source, so there'll be no licensing problems
• the project homepage of distcc is http://distcc.samba.org/
  see also http://code.google.com/p/distcc/
• the project homepage of cygwin is http://www.cygwin.com/
  cygwin offers a distcc package unter http://cygwin.com/packages/distcc/

So is there anybody who is interested in starting this project?

After Christmas i'll do some research, which files can be deleted within cygwin, and post this here.
Then the most of the work should be done.
But i'll need someone more familiar with portableApps.com to put everything together into a .paf.exe file.