distcc

distcc is a distributed compiler. Quite useful if you have large projects to build.

distcc is installed on the cluster and its use is transparent as long as you first set these environment variables and a tmp directory.

export PATH=/usr/lib/distcc:${PATH}
export DISTCC_DIR=/tmp/${USER}/distcc
export DISTCC_HOSTS="newton faraday bell galileo einstein"
mkdir -p $DISTCC_DIR

You can now invoke make or your favorite compilation tool with the option for multiple jobs. So to compile a Linux kernel with 30 concurrent jobs run ...

cd /scratch-local/linux-2.6.26
make defconfig
make -j 30

... and watch it be built in no time.