[oi-dev] Compiler migration #2

[Jim Klimov]

On 2013-01-26 20:57, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> GCC 4.4 does not produce code for modern CPUs whereas GCC is continually
> enhanced to be able to produce code which targets modern CPUs.

And in terms of prepackaged generic distribution that works on i386
and above, how can targeting of modern CPUs be a useful bonus and
not a drawback? This was stressed by Luca's question:

> The only possible workarounds are build a recent gcc version yourself or use
> SFEgcc package, but the last option is not a viable alternative if your CPU is
> not SSE2-capable. So, not every users are able to use that compiler/runtime.

I do know that there are solutions to my questions, and a couple of
months ago we've discussed them (i.e. prebuilt HW-specific libraries
lofs-mounted over a common filename, as is libc.so; or usage of UBE
unified binary executables).

I just wanted to raise this concern - that newest is not always the
best when you deal with such heterogenous environments. I am "for"
the optimized code running on machines and using their CPUs in the
best possible manner, but this should be specially catered for by
the distro - so that these newest CPUs aren't the only ones capable
of running this distro ;)

My 2c,
//Jim Klimov