Use apt-build to optimize for architecture

[arkaine23]

I'm testing this out now and so far its working alright. I made a huge list of packages to do an apt-build world --reinstall on. Occaisionally, I strike a package from the list when there's not source available. Naturally, crictical (gcc libc6 kernel), knoppix-specific, and troublesome (openoffice) packages have been ommitted from my list. I'm using-

-mcpu=athlon-xp -march=i686 -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -ffast-math


-march makes the code unuseable to everything but the cpu-type entered, -mcpu tunes the code for the specific cpu type but does not make it unuseable to other cpu's. -O3 sets the maximimum optimizations level (and makes bianries a little larger). The others are not as important. So the options I chose will optimize the code for Athlon XP's, and optimize/make the code unuseable to anything that's not i686 (386's, 486's, penitum 1's, and K6-2's). Pentium 2 and up should be fine and see a nice benefit, while Athlon XP's will see the most gain. If this works well, I might make two releases, the other one optimized for P4's.

It won't break apt either. Although an upgrade or dist-upgrade would replace the optimized packages with standard ones, unless I do pinning to make apt-built packages have a higher priority. But pinning the optimized packages could hold up updating, so its sort of a catch-22. However, for a live CD, it seems like a great idea. Many users are not going to be installing, so they will get the extra optimization when runnning live. Users who install can choose to use

apt-build install package_name

for any package they want to optimize. And once I have a decent apt-build.list file populated with packages the source is available for and which are safe to rebuild, a user could apt-get upgrade and then follow-up with apt-build world --reinstall.


Anyway, my latest project also has prelinking and I'm hoping to have a beta release by this weekend. It's based on Knoppix 3.8. If someone wants to guide me a little with kernel and initrd stuff, I'll use squashfs instead of cloop.


BTW, does anyone know how to get rid of the Spanish language messages that come through dpkg when configuring in my chroot? Everything else is working in English except dpkg's error and configure messages and gvim when run in icewm. Will they just go away when its built and booted normally with the proper language code?



Edit: For those who give apt-build a try, gcc messages will not show any of the Cflags you configure, however if you

ps aux | grep cc

You'll see them. I think this has to do with the gcc-wrapper used by apt-build.



http://overclockix.octeams.com/ocix38.jpg

[tr]

BTW, does anyone know how to get rid of the Spanish language messages that come through dpkg when configuring in my chroot? Everything else is working in English except dpkg's error and configure messages and gvim when run in icewm. Will they just go away when its built and booted normally with the proper language code?

Sorry for my late answer.

In chroot you locale is LANG=POSIX by default. You get your own locales in use by adding /etc/sysconfig/i18n from you CD to the same place or running /etc/init.d/knoppix-autoconfig again (it is run during boot process before starting X).

Of course in yoyr remastered CD your own locale settings are used.


-tapsa-