Re: [dwm] improve config.mk

On 9/7/06, Anselm R. Garbe <arg_AT_10kloc.org> wrote:
> No, because CFLAGS might inherit totally retarded options from
> the host OS with your patch. Also, the -OXXX -march=XXXX options
> don't bring any real benefit. You shouldn't believe the FUD the
> gentoo people want to make you believe. The gcc optimizations
> are kind of a joke compared to other commercial C compilers.
> -Os is optimizing for size and the architecture is implicitely
> given by the compiler. If your userland is already builded for
> the athlon-xp architecture and your compiler toolchain is linked
> as well to athlon-xp architecture, you don't need to set any
> options in gcc. Just compare the binaries with -O3 and -O3
> -march=athlon-xp, I doubt you will see much or any difference in
> your environment. Apart from that, I doubt you will be able to
> measure any difference in resource usage, cpu execution time,
> and what not.

Optimization is far overrated, and not really an argument for using a
source based distro. Basically, any machine that's fast enough to run
a source based package system conveniently doesn't noticably benefit
from optimizations, and any system where the optimizations would be
really noticable is so slow that running a source based package system
on it is a complete PITA.

The main justification for source based package systems is, in my
eyes, something quite different than speed: platform independence. The
more platforms an OS runs on, the harder it gets to provide binary
packages for each and every one of them. Source based package systems
are a good solution there (NetBSD for instance provides binary
packages for the most common platforms it runs on, and relies on
pkgsrc for other platforms).

Gr. Sander.
Received on Thu Sep 07 2006 - 12:13:04 UTC