Re: PGCC package?

[Ossama Othman <othman@astrosun.tn.cornell.edu>]

Hi,

> Has anyone had any experience of using PGCC with Debian?  I'm
> surprised that there isn't a package available for it, or even any
> trying to create one (according to the prospective packages list).

The EGCS project has been attempting to recombine most or all of the gcc
forks, including pgcc.  Therefore, EGCS gcc should have most, if not all,
of the optimizations available in the PGCC compiler.  Some one please
correct me if I am wrong (be nice about it :-)).  There is a Debian hamm
package for EGCS gcc called "egcc."  The g++ and g77 packages are the EGCS
versions, already.  Egcc was not made the default Debian compiler since
there are still some kernel compilation issues that need to be or 
had to be resolved.

> Has there been any discussion as to whether pre-compiled Pentium
> binaries should be made optionally available?  It's going to be a PITA
> downloading the source and recompiling for *every* upgrade of *every*
> package I want speeded up.

If you use EGCS gcc, found in the Debian egcc package, just use the
"-mpentium" compiler flag.  This should optimize your code for pentium
processors, just as PGCC does.  This CPU flag for pentiums isn't available
in gcc 2.7.x, from what I recall.

Here is what the EGCS gcc info pages say about the optimizations:

--------------------------------------------------
Intel 386 Options
-----------------

   These `-m' options are defined for the i386 family of computers:

`-mcpu=CPU TYPE'
     Assume the defaults for the machine type CPU TYPE when scheduling
     instructions.  The choices for CPU TYPE are: `i386', `i486',
     `i586' (`pentium'), `pentium', `i686' (`pentiumpro') and
     `pentiumpro'. While picking a specific CPU TYPE will schedule
     things appropriately for that particular chip, the compiler will
     not generate any code that does not run on the i386 without the
     `-march=CPU TYPE' option being used.

`-march=CPU TYPE'
     Generate instructions for the machine type CPU TYPE.  The choices
     for CPU TYPE are: `i386', `i486', `pentium', and `pentiumpro'.
     Specifying `-march=CPU TYPE' implies `-mcpu=CPU TYPE'.

`-m386'
`-m486'
`-mpentium'
`-mpentiumpro'
     Synonyms for -mcpu=i386, -mcpu=i486, -mcpu=pentium, and
     -mcpu=pentiumpro respectively.
----------------------------------------------------

I hope that this stuff helps.

-Ossama



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