Using the dmake Utility

You execute dmake on a dmake host and distribute jobs to build servers. You can also distribute jobs to the dmake host, in which case it is also considered to be a build server. The dmake utility distributes jobs based on makefile targets that dmake determines (based on your makefiles) can be built concurrently. You can use a machine as a build server if it meets the following requirements:

• From the dmake host (the machine you are using) you must be able to use rsh, without being prompted for a password, to remotely execute commands on the build server. See man rsh(1) or the system AnswerBook documentation for more information about the rsh command. For example:

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  demo% rsh build_server which dmake
  /opt/SUNWspro/bin/dmake

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• The bin directory in which the dmake software is installed must be accessible from the build server. See the share(1M) and mount(1M) man pages or the system AnswerBook documentation for more information about creating shared filesystems.

• By default, dmake assumes that the logical path to the dmake executables on the build server is the same as on the dmake host. You can override this assumption by specifying a path name as an attribute of the host entry in the runtime configuration file. For example:

  ---

  group sparc-cluster {
     host wren   { jobs = 10 , path = "/export/SUNWspro/bin"}
     host stimpy { path = "/opt/SUNWspro/bin"             }

  ---

• The source hierarchy you are building must be:

  • Accessible from the build server

  • Mounted under the same name

From the dmake host you can control which build servers are used and how many dmake jobs are allotted to each build server. The number of dmake jobs that can run on a given build server can also be limited on that server.

If you specify the -m option with the parallel argument, or set the DMAKE_MODE variable or macro to the value parallel, dmake does not scan your runtime configuration file. Therefore, you must specify the number of jobs using the -j option or the DMAKE_MAX_JOBS variable or macro. If you do not specify a value this way, a default of two jobs is used.

If you modify the maximum number of jobs using the -j option, or the DMAKE_MAX_JOBS variable or macro when using dmake in distributed mode, the value you specify overrides the values listed in the runtime configuration file. The value you specify is used as the total number of jobs that can be distributed to all build servers.