Re: [AD] Remove -pipe

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"Eric Botcazou" <ebotcazou@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> The attached patch removes the -pipe build option (from mainline).  I
don't
> think it really makes a difference.

What is your rationale? What platforms/builds and on which hardware were you
testing, and were you using ramdisks? Did you reboot between each build so
that caching didn't influence the results?

The -pipe parameter can potentially speed up compilation significantly.
The -pipe parameter, as you know, causes data from each gcc compilation
stage to be transferred using FIFOs instead of temporary files. On a
computer with enough RAM, this data won't even touch the disk, so there's no
overhead. With very little RAM, data can be swapped out to disk, and there's
no benefit.

A popular alternative to using -pipe is using ramdisks. Dj. Delorie mentions
this trick in the DJGPP FAQ. For instance on an LFS (Linux from scratch)
inspired distro I once made, I had /tmp mounted on tmpfs (dynamic ramdisk)
and it really sped things up. We're probably talking about an effective
doubling of compilation speed here, if not more.

> Applied to mainline.

IMO you should revert the patch.

Sincerely Henrik Stokseth.






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