>From sfwnv-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org Mon Nov 5 12:52:26 2007
>Shanti
> Well, there seems to be a bit of disconnect here. Sun Studio Compiler
>folks consistently recommend us to use '-fast' compiler option but at
>the same time folks reviewing our integration within SXDE give a
>consistent 'NO' to this option. I am not sure, what is the right
>direction here. It will be very unfortunate and confusing for folks
>using SXDE or Indiana if components from Cool Stack can significantly
>out perform.
The important thing is that the output of the build should be
the same whether I'm building on the wimpiest machine we support
or the super-fastest we want to make look good. And the binaries
run on all supported machines (and I'd hope, at great performance
on all even if that means a bit more work).
Reproducible build output is a good thing.
If you can use -fast and then use other options that then make
the above true then perhaps that's ok. But I'd still probably
prefer making explicit all the options you want instead so
that maintainers that follow you know exactly what you wanted.
Plus I'd be a little bit worried about this:
The expansion of -fast can change
from one release of the compiler to the next
which could mean it gets worse or better, but maybe just different,
but still you don't know what it may mean in SS11+ (though
of course one hopes any explicit options still mean the same too :)
Then there's this:
NOTES
If you specify -fast, you should not rely on the value of
errno because the value can change as a result of code
optimization. The easiest way to avoid this problem is to
not specify -fast.
which would seem to be bad for code in sfw since we don't control it.
Mike
