Re: What to do with optimization flags ?

[Adam C Powell IV <hazelsct@mit.edu>]

Michel LESPINASSE wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 28, 2000 at 06:11:47AM +0100, Samuel Hocevar wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 27, 2000, Ben Collins wrote:
> > > IMO, the better way would be if the CPU intensive portions were in a
> > > shared library (even if the library is only used for this application).
> > > Then you could have one binary program, and do what libc6 does for
> > > optimized libs:
>
> >    This looks very elegant, but I'm afraid that the performance gain
> > brougth by the 686 compilation might get countered by the lost register
> > caused by -fPIC.
>
> Two things :
>
> * shared objects do not actually have to be built with -fPIC. They
> work fine without it (on x86 at least). libtool can be a pain if you
> try to use it, but thats all.

Unfortunately, this breaks on some architectures, e.g. ARM (like, it won't run
at all).  Which would be a good reason for this rule in Policy.

I suppose you could put in some kind of condition which uses -fPIC on ARM and
not on the others, if you don't mind bending the rules a bit.

-Adam P.