Distcc

Installation

# emerge distcc
# vim /etc/make.conf

MAKEOPTS="-jN"         <- N is  =  2 * total # of CPUs + 1
FEATURES="distcc"

# w3m http://distcc.samba.org/ftp/distcc/

Find newest version and download

# distcc-config --set-hosts "localhost username@sshservername"

In Gentoo, Portage will automatically use distcc (given the make.conf settings from above). For other systems and for your own compilations:

$ make -j8 CC=distcc

I have experienced unsurmountable problems with cross-compiling for Portage from Solaris.
I have had problems with using distcc through SSH Proxies. Such a proxy is essentially one-way communication, and the distccd might get confused that the calling server isn't the one that it is compiling for.

It should work on machines with same version of gcc, same operating system, and not through a proxy.