Clarification on Hudson/Jenkins Slave operation

Question

Fairly simple question really, yet I can't find a clear answer on google for it. In Hudson or Jenkins, when you set up slave nodes to build, does the build system piece of parts of jobs to the slaves, or does it send out full builds? For example:

Say I have two projects to build, i386 version and an x86_64 version. If I use slave nodes in my system, will Jenkins farm the x86_64 verison to a slave, while the master builds the i386 version? or will it farm out pieces to the slave (say, compiling linux kernel to the slave, while the master builds another piece?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Short answer : a complete job is done by only one slave

When using slaves in a Hudson/Jenkins instance, you will be able to send jobs on every nodes. You wil be able to build many jobs in parallel, on multiple slaves, but each job instance will be done completely by a unique slave, no load-balancing of the part of a job.