On 22/02/2010 11:04, Andrew Haley wrote:
> On 02/22/2010 12:29 AM, Erik Trulsson wrote:
>> On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 11:35:11PM +0000, Dave Korn wrote:
>>> On 21/02/2010 22:42, Erik Trulsson wrote:
>>>
>>>> Yes, it does if the user is using binaries compiled by somebody else,
>>>> and that somebody else did not explicitly specify any CPU-flags.
>>>>
>>>> I believe that is the situation when installing most
>>>> Linux-distributions for example.
>>> No, surely not. The linux distributions use configure options
>>> when they package their compilers to choose the default with-cpu
>>> and with-arch options, and those are quite deliberately chosen
>>> according to the binary standards of the distro. It is hardly a
>>> case of "somebody else did not explicitly specify" cpu flags; they
>>> in fact explicitly specified them according to the system
>>> requirements for the distro. If your distro says it doesn't
>>> support i386, this is *why*!
>> Are you sure of that? Really sure?
>> Some Linux distributions almost certainly do as you describe, but all
>> of them? I doubt it.
>
> And I doubt otherwise. Linux distros put a great deal of thought into
> which machines they are targeting with their binary distributions.
> And the existence of one tiny distro somewhere that doesn't would not
> change that fact.
Actually, there are probably dozens or hundreds of tiny distros out there
that are basically somebody's home-made repackaging-and-minor-variant of
existing bundles. However, I think that these are the same distros that
constitute the 90% referred to in Sturgeon's Law, and so I would still not see
that as any reason to change GCC's defaults!
cheers,
DaveK
