[LAD] optimum binary distribution (was: vectorization)

[Fernando Lopez-Lezcano]

On Thu, 2008-04-17 at 14:00 +0200, Richard Spindler wrote:
> 2008/4/17, Jens M Andreasen <jens.andreasen at comhem.se>:
> > You really do that? OK, the solution is identical to choosing the right
> >  base architecture in the first place. One of these gets mounted
> >  as /usr/lib
> >
> ---8<---
> >  /*/usr/lib/i386
> >  /*/usr/lib/i686
> >  /*/usr/lib/i686.sse2
> 
> this is getting ridiculous, what liboil does is definitely the right
> thing to do, for a number of reasons. First of all being that the
> original developer is likely the most knowledgeable person to handle
> this problem. By putting that burden onto the packager or worse the
> enduser, who are more often than not clueless about such issues, you
> will have a lot of noise in your support channels (irc/mail) of people
> that will keep asking the same questions and who will have the same
> problems all over again and again. This ... is ... Madness. ;-)

Yup, it is madness. 

And looks like opinions are unlikely to change in this matter. 

So what will actually happen is that the software in question will not
get packaged, or if it is, it will just have to use a compromise set of
assumptions that will make it slower that necessary in most cases. So be
it (shrug). 

As mentioned in the thread, other software package optimize at runtime
quite happily, amongst them the actual kernel on which _everything_ else
depends for speed (there used to be i386, i586 and i686 packaged
versions of the kernel - guess what? not anymore...). 

-- Fernando