Time for a compile server status update?

[Dan Kegel <dank at kegel dot com>]

Hi guys,
it's been a whole six weeks since we last heard news
about the compile server (http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2003-10/msg01398.html et seq.)
Could you post a short note with where things are now?

I recently chatted with a guy who used to do compilers
at Borland; he said he'd done a speed benchmark comparing
gcc with msvc, and msvc compiled 11 times faster than gcc
when you turn on all the tricks (including incremental compiling).
He was of the opinion that gcc needed to be burnt to the
ground and rewritten to be purely x86 oriented, etc., etc.
I bit my tongue.  I'm really looking forward to being able
to say "The 3.5 release will compile packages with large headers
2x faster than previous releases thanks to the compile server",
or something like that.

Also, it would be cool if you could say a few words about
what it would take to someday run the compile server in parallel
on multiple computers, distcc style.  The obvious "just use
distcc" probably won't help as much as one would think
because distcc runs the preprocessor before shipping the
code out, whereas (judging by
http://per.bothner.com/papers/GccSummit03-slides/) your
compile server really wants the original source files.
Presumably distcc could send over source files if
the distcc server hadn't seen them before (based on a
hash of the file).   In large installations, you'd want
to go just on a hash of the file's contents, not on its
absolute path, since multiple users might be compiling
the same file.

Anyway, we're all salivating over this, so speak on up.
Maybe it'll help draw more people to help work on it.

Thanks!
- Dan