Ethan Benson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > On Sat, May 27, 2000 at 07:31:27AM +0200, Mattias Sundberg wrote: > > > > I sent a mail asking about how to compile i686 Deb packages, due to an > > disfunctional backup attempt I lost all my mailboxes so I donĀ“t know if I > > got any replies so here goes again: > > > > How do I compile i686 Debian packages using apt-get/dpkg, is it enough > > just to compile the kernel as i686? > > its a waste of time, don't bother. 1) it won't buy any sigificant > speed increase in 99.9% of programs. and 2) there is no i686 > optimization AFAIK, only plain jane Pentium optimization which does > not help on PII, PIIIs or any AMD/non-intel chip. > > the biggest thing you get out of this type of optimization is > increased unreliability due to miscompilation.
Don't take offence, I'm just curious. If I understand you correctly, adding a switch (-march=pentiumpro / i686) to gcc at compile time is meaningless for 99.9% of programs? It doesn't make sense for the gcc people to add a switch that does nothing 99.9% of the time, plus the increased unreliability factor. Can you explain a little bit more or point to docs that can on this issue? This is one of the thing I'm curious about. Thanks, MB