Compiling software from source

GCC optimizing flags

GCC provides several optimized flags that might give applications a little bit of extra speed. I have not experienced any noticeable performance boost by adjusting the flags.

There are several ways to enable these optimization flags. You can export the flags as environment variables, or if you use Gentoo you can add them to /etc/make.conf. For each of CPUs in my systems I provide the flags that I use: Athlon thunderbird 800MHz (Workstation), Pentium III 800MHz (HTPC) and G4 400Mhz (Powerbook Titanium).

For more information:

Performance Tuning with GCC, Part 1
GCC: Options That Control Optimization
Gentoo forums: CFLAGS Central
Freshmeat article: GCC Myths and Facts

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