PGMAKE: A Portable Distributed Make System

Andrew Lih and Erez Zadok
Computer Science Department, Columbia University

CUCS-035-94

July 13, 1994

Abstract:

We describe pgmake, which extends the GNU project's make utility to support distributed job execution using the Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) package from Oak Ridge National Laboratory. These two packages were chosen because of their high level of portability to different architectures, free source code distribution policy and availability to the public.

Using medium-sized farms of modest performing workstations, our system has achieved software build times faster than expensive high-speed uni- and multiprocessors. The highly portable code addditions make this implementation easy to port among various platforms.

 

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Background
  • 2.0.0.1 GNU Make.
  • 2.0.0.2 PVM.
• 3. Design
  • 3.0.0.1 Execution Environment Issues
  • 3.1 gmake Modifications and Execution Agent
  • 3.2 Agent-Daemon: pvm3_ad
• 4. Evaluation
  • 4.0.0.1 Goals.
  • 4.0.0.2
  • 4.0.0.3 Results.
  • 4.1 Anomalies
    • 4.1.0.1 ``See-Saw'' performance.
    • 4.1.0.2 Random behavior for PVM of size one.
  • 4.2 Potential Problems
    • 4.2.0.1 NFS Bottleneck
    • 4.2.0.2 Gateway and Router Concerns
  • 4.3 Experiences
    • 4.3.0.1 GNU Make
    • 4.3.0.2 PVM
• 5. Future Work
• Bibliography
• About this document ...