OK, whoa there, Tex. Personally, I’ve never used Xcode (though I know it exists, 'cuz I just installed it on one of the Macs…but just for the libraries). Is it an IDE? If so, then yes, it’s likely that the compiler command you’re issuing on the command-line is lacking. The actual command you use and an error message would be most helpful. Although I also have to disclaim that I’m not really a C++ guy and so may not have a ready answer.
Ah, that’s kind of what I suspected. Writing that code is a pretty painful process, actually. Out of curiosity, have you looked into Apple’s Server package? I don’t know much about it and have zero personal experience with it, but last I looked, they claimed to have some utilities that managed distribution (specifically, XGrid, now that I looked up the link). The whole Server package was $100 added to the price of a new computer, possibly well worth it for XGrid alone. And I’d be very interested in hearing someone’s actual experience with it and it’s capabilities.
It sounds like this might be best – depending on the divisibility of the problem and your software licenses. Which is why I’m pursuing my own solution for use at the office. The image analysis we do takes about a week of full time processing per image on a single PC, written in software that costs $1K per seat. And we have about a TB of images coming in sometime in September. But the actual analysis computation can all be handled by open source software…now that I’ve written code to leverage it, of course. If you’re in a similar situation, I don’t think you can legally use multiple copies across virtual servers.
But, if you don’t have to deal with licensing issues, I would think that estimating what would be an hour’s chunk of work on your own computer and using that as a guide as to how many virtual servers you’d need would be a great way to go. Especially if it’s a one-shot deal.