Can I use distcc to help with upgrade to gentoo 1.4 from 1.2

[Fillzee]

I am currently upgrading my P166 from gentoo 1.2 with gcc 2.95 to gentoo 1.4 with gcc 3.2.2 as described in the gentoo upgrade guide. I have already completed the compilation for gcc, glibc, and binutils. Is it now safe to emerge distcc and use it to help with the compilation of 'emerge -e world' to complete the upgrade process?

[wick]

You can, but you'll find that you won't be able to fully automate your update due to some packages failing when using distcc as the compiler. I've found quite a few packages that won't compile with distcc (emerge -u system, for example, produces 6 packages that won't compile with distcc, at least not on my 5 distcc machine distribution.)

I haven't gotten around to writing one yet, but I think one could write a script that captures the return value from emerge and if it fails with the typical failures received from packages being compiled with distcc, it could back off to using regular gcc for that package. In fact, while building a new Gentoo system from scratch, I'm about ready to do just this because I'm tired of babysitting it.