[wplug] Compiler questions

[John Harrold]

Sometime in February Embery, Nathan assaulted the keyboard and produced:

| :) Let me rephrase...
| 
| GCC can only optimize to what you tell it. That's why you pass it the march
| flag. So, if someone else has already compiled a piece of software, even
| optimizing it for i686 (which is what I happen to need), what exactly is the
| point is doing it myself? I was just saying that just because something is
| compiled on your machine, doesn't make it automatically faster. GCC is
| smart, but not that smart. I'm not knocking gentoo or freebsd. I used gentoo
| for awhile, and still use freebsd every single day. Just questioning the
| logic of 'I compiled it myself, on this machine, so its better'.

If you are looking to run program A and it uses libs B, C, and D. Then as
long as A-D are compiled for your target arch with all of the optimization
flags turned on, the program has essentially been compiled on your
computer. However if A is compiled for your arch and the optimization stuff
is all turned on, but B-D are not, you might not have the same benefit. By
using a source based distro, you know everything has been compiled for your
hardware. I believe this was how mandrake got started by repackaging redhat
for 586.

At least that is how I understand it. 

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