vsixg - Insomniac Games

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What does this do?
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vsixg is a go-between for SN Systems' ProDG-VSI and Xoreax Software's Incredibuild.
It enables VSI builds to use the Incredibuild Grid Engine for parallel compilation.

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How do I install/uninstall it?
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To install, run vsixg_install.pl

To uninstall, run vsixg_remove.pl

Neither scripts take any parameters, and will not mess around with any files that
it does not recognize.  Future versions of vsixg or ProDG will necessitate the
updating of these scripts.

ITS ADVISED THAT YOU REMOVE VSIXG BEFORE UPGRADING OR RE-INSTALLING PRODG-VSI.
I doubt that anything bad would happen, but its not something that has been
well tested.

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How does it work?
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It uses the same sneaky technique that ProDG-VSI uses.  It replaces vsimake.exe
with another tool (vsixg.exe), and moves vsimake.exe to snmake.exe.  vsixg.exe
tells the Xoreax Grid Engine to run snmake.exe in an augmented mode.  This
augmented mode hooks parallel compile process creation and farms those
processes out to the grid.  It only hooks if the -j flag of make is set.

Only certain compile tools are run remotely (on the grid).  These processes are
specified in the vsixg.xml file in the bin folder (after installation).

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How do I get good results?
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The first thing to know is that you SHOULDN'T USE THE INCREDIBUILD TOOLBAR TO BUILD
VSI SOLUTION FILES.  The actual Incredibuild build system doesn't know how to handle
the VSI vcproj and sln files.  You should continue to use the ProDG VSI toolbar to
invoke builds of your project/solution.

The next thing you should know is how to set the -j parameter from within the ProDG
VSI properites.  This parameter gates the number of parallel builds to allow to run
simultaneously.  Since ProDG uses the grid to do heavy lifting (as opposed to the 4
or 8 virtual processors in your local machine), this parameter needs a higher value.
A good starting value is 12.  To set it, select Tools from the Visual Studio menu,
then Options.  Select the ProDG VSI node, then the Build Settings (advanced) node.
'Maximum number of compile processes to run per project' correpsonds to the -j
parameter.