Fedora Cleared To Build Python Package With "-O3" Optimizations

[fulalas]

Let's make software slow as hell (hi, GNOME) and then try to squeeze some marginal gains with the compiler

[dralley]

I thought they never cared about performance or end-user experience, only the debugging experience of "engineers" and the religious and legal and bureaucratic fanaticism of "GNU", "LL.M", "Committee".

The debugging experience of engineers relates directly to performance and end-user experience.

So much whining over a completely imperceptible and irrelevant (<1%) performance hit that has led to numerous performance fixes in the time since.

[AlanTuring69]

Let's make software slow as hell (hi, GNOME) and then try to squeeze some marginal gains with the compiler

yeh makin software slow on purpoise den tryin' to fix wit compiliers just plain stoopid gnome devs need to get they act togetha, love them old skool ways cuz new stuff aint cuttin it gotta stick to the roots y'all

[emblemparade]

Just FYI, it's remarkably easy to build the entire Python distribution from source and set whatever build flags you are comfortable with. Python's build system is quite good.

I've done this a few times with older OSes that did not have a newer Python version that I needed.

Running Python in a container is also great for some use cases.

[WileEPyote]

And here I am running Mainline I compiled with O3. lol

[cynic]

I thought they never cared about performance or end-user experience, only the debugging experience of "engineers" and the religious and legal and bureaucratic fanaticism of "GNU", "LL.M", "Committee".

but it also has flaws

[oleid]

And here I am running Mainline I compiled with O3. lol

You mean your whole desktop?

[WileEPyote]

You mean your whole desktop?

kernel

[ahrs]

What more are you expecting, exactly? Fedora does releases every 6 months, they can't all be big and exciting. If you want interesting and experimental, go with Fedora Atomic or something.

I don't even agree w/ your assessment, replacing zlib with zlib-ng is a pretty big change in Fedora 40. Bootable containers are significant. Fedora 41 will have DNF 5. The "modern C" initiative is boring but useful.

They also have Wget2 packaged as Wget now. That's a pretty big change:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Wget2asWget

Distros like Arch don't even have a Wget2 package!
(it is in the AUR though: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/wget2)

[avis]

I've always thought that going with whatever upstream sets while using -O2 as the fallback O level would be the best way of doing things. If the program's developers set it to -O3, -Os, -Ofast they probably have a reason. If they didn't set it to anything, err on the side of caution.

To me, building everything with -O2 "because it's safe" seems about as silly as rebuilding the system with -Os "because it's an Android ROM on an ARM processor and the smaller binaries will better utilize less cache" and then -O2 and -O3 builds still run faster. I don't want to pull up bullshit from XDA from a decade ago...just saying that this is a good reason as to why O levels aren't necessarily a great thing to set globally due to following the wisdom of ancient PC voodoo anecdotes.

Whatever the case, it's always good news when systems become faster.

I've tested -Os extensively on multiple devices and never once the binaries using it were faster than the binaries compiled with -O2. "The smaller code fits the cache better" is nothing but a myth unfortunately. -Os is OK for embedded devices where ROM storage space is at premium but that's it.