Re: pros/cons of installing from source

On Friday 04 May 2007 05:36, Greg Folkert wrote:
like encoders and decoders. Along with the entire

Going to be very machine specific... one of the biggest groans against GCC is
that is supports so many target platforms but doesn't do any of them
particularly well. Intel's compiler generates very "quick" code but IIRC only
targets their processors.

Encoders and decoders, and things like emulators that use image scaling,
generally contain code to take advantage of processor specific features at
run time. For example if you build mplayer correctly it will detect and
utilise the correct SIMD extensions for your hardware at runtime.

emerge is very simple tool to use, especially if you just hunker down
and use it. Selecting the right architecture and listings (I used
"current" snapshots) is a big factor. I had everything up and running as
soon as it stopped compiling and installing.

I reckon if we did the maths.. most "ricers" spend more time compiling stuff
than the time they save by their system being subjectively "faster".

The only platform I've ever seen a real benefit from compiling everything with
arch specific GCC flags is the 32bit SPARCs. Old SPARCs didn't have a
hardware multiply or divide (I forget which) so GCC built code that didn't
use it even on SPARCs that had the instruction. There again switching from a
Linux based system to NetBSD on that hardware increased real world
performance by a big big margin without it rumbling away for days building
single large packages like perl.


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Anyone interested in building a vms-like OS?
    ... then you have a good reason for preferring the BSD license over GPL. ... geeks :-) is that it is fast, 5-10 times faster than gcc, while still ... Compiling 10 times faster with almost no optimization does not ... It is compiling much faster but doing less optimizations. ...
    (comp.os.vms)
  • Conexant HCF Modem Problems
    ... Conexant HCF modem, which is a "controllerless" modem, not a HSF which ... files to compile and to install but the problem is when I try to config ... compiling (gcc) mod_osspec.c ...
    (comp.os.linux.hardware)
  • [ANN] macstl 0.1.5 -- Xcode compatibility
    ... The new version also has fixes for older gcc ... Now builds with Xcode 1.0. ... Fixed altivec functions not compiling in gcc 3.1: ...
    (comp.lang.cpp)
  • Re: Finally one site with all the C fundas
    ... was pretty lenient and we did not actively pursue compiling the tool ... the CPU/memory architecture doesn't allow unaligned accesses. ... Also gcc 3.3.6 would have spotted that if invoked with the '-W' ... Casting the return value of mallocis never necessary ...
    (comp.lang.c)
  • Re: A bug in gnat/gcc 3.3.3?
    ... > Compiling ASIS and GLADE for a newer version isn't that difficult - ... harping on GCC 3.4, but I'd like reports about ASIS and GLADE for GCC ... GCC 3.4 does not "have" PolyORB, ...
    (comp.lang.ada)