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Re: Handling optimization flags in Debian packages



On Sun, 2010-04-04 at 17:29 -0300, Tiago Bortoletto Vaz wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I've faced an issue (#557550) which is much probably caused by a CPU which
> doesn't support SSE2 instructions. I'm not sure about the best way to address
> this. Any suggestion will be very welcome. Actually I can see the following
> workarounds:
> 
> 1) consider that most of CPUs support this flag, so tell the reporter to
> compile the package by him/herself.

This is the wrong answer; we officially support CPUs dating back to 486.

> 2) remove this specific flag during package building, ending with a
> non-optimized software available for all users.
>
> 3) create a specific -sse2 (or -non-sse2) package.

Both acceptable.

> 4) ask the upstream to code runtime checks before using SSE2 specific
> instructions (is that possible?).
[...]

This is the best.  Also there are libraries like liboil that implement
various common functions that can benefit from SIMD extensions and that
automatically select the right version at run-time.  Perhaps this
package can use that?

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it makes it worse.

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