KDE optimizations...

[Tim Wunder]

On 8/5/2004 5:06 PM, I believe that Jerry McBride wrote:
> As suggested on the gentoo mailing list... I recompiled KDE 3.2.3 using -Os 
> compiler optimization and my results have been very positive.
> 
> The most notable change was the decrease in installed footprint. File size 
> went from 348meg to less than 329meg. Load time for the various apps is the 
> second notable performance boost. My seat-o-da-pants-ometer seems like 
> perhaps a %30 decrease in load time. As for execution, no real, notable 
> change. 
> 
> Overall, it's worth looking at.
> 
> 

For grins, I forward your mail to the kde-redhat-users group where Rex
Deiter (the maintainer) responded thusly, when asked what optimizations,
if any, the kde-redhat team uses to compile KDE:
 > Standard rpm opts: -O2 -march=i386 -mcpu=i686
 >
 > In the past, I had experimented with: -Os -march=i386 -mcpu=i686 and
 > gave up on that eventually, after I experienced some wierd behavior,
 > which was possibly optimization/compiler error.
 >
 > As a matter of fact, I've found a couple of -Os gcc optimization bugs
 > (in a couple of non-kde packages), and when I reported them to
 > redhat, was told that -Os isn't supported really, and should be using
 > -O2 anyway.
 >
 > Since then, I've been of the opinion that the slightly larger binary
 > size is worth the piece-of-mind (and worrying less about compiler
 > issues).
 >
 > -- Rex

Now I have no idea what -Os vs. -O2 means, but I'll be sticking with the 
pre-compiled RPMs of KDE 3.x as supplied by the kde-redhat folks for my 
installs of Fedora Core 2. But, it's linux, do what suits you :-)

Tim