[Nix-dev] nix on compute cluster?

[Andreas Herrmann]

On Friday 10 October 2014 17:49:20 Wout Mertens wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 4:34 PM, Andreas Herrmann <andreash87 at gmx.ch> wrote:
> > On Friday 10 October 2014 15:32:52 Wout Mertens wrote:
> > > I think you could do this. You would set it up so the nix server does the
> > > compiles and the grid runs distcc. See the wiki, the raspberry pi page
> > has
> > > explanations about distcc.
> > Oh, I didn't know that this worked outside of NixOS. I just can't find any
> > details on how to integrate distcc with sge. Do you have any experience
> > with that?
> No sorry, but I'd just install distcc as a daemon on all nodes or else use
> sge for the distribution somehow... pretend that they're super long running
> batch jobs...
I think an on demand approach would fit better for the current usage pattern than a permanently running build server. Looking at distcc more closely, it seems like a too low level approach. E.g. it wouldn't cover clang, or icc (once in nix) compilations.

The sun grid engine allows for scheduled interactive remote shells. It also allows to submit any random shell script, or sequence of commands as a batch job. Shouldn't there be a way to make nix run its builders as such jobs?

To my understanding userHook is too late. It's only executed inside the builder shell, and can't be used to open a remote shell session that executes the builder, correct?


Best,

Andreas