[derekp7]

One use that I can think of (never tried it myself, though in theory it should work) is if you are trying to cross compile for a processor architecture that doesn't have decent speed (many embedded chips), and the package you are compiling is difficult to cross compile (where the build script makes decisions based on the local environment or is otherwise to get to play nice with a cross compiler).

In that case you can run the build on the target CPU, but instead of calling gcc locally it calls distcc pointing to a cross compiler installed on a fast machine. This can be useful if you are compiling a bunch of packages from a distribution.

[rvdginste]

I've used distcc in that way long time ago. I had an powerpc iBook (G4) and a x86 desktop (Pentium4). The desktop helped compile software on the iBook using distcc and a cross-compiler. It did work pretty well. I also used ccache in addition to that to cache build output. That was probably around 2005 when most (all?) cpus were still single-core.

[LukeShu]

Indeed, in my use (with the Parabola GNU/Linux-libre distro), this is the killer use-case of distcc. This is how most of Parabola's packages for MIPS were built, and how many for ARM are built.