[LAD] optimum binary distribution (was: vectorization)

[Jens M Andreasen]

On Thu, 2008-04-17 at 14:00 +0200, Richard Spindler wrote:
> First of all being that the original developer is likely the most 
> knowledgeable person to handle this problem. 

You are assuming that the original unpaid developer owns any of the
fancy hardware in question? That is in the general case - to put it
mildly - a stretch.

As has been shown in a previous thread, auto-vectorization is taking off
in a major way approaching and occasionally going beyond what a skilled
ASM programmer can accomplish. If I have understood the gcc mailing-list
correctly, this will go into the next version (4.3?) as default for -O3

The original programmer may not be aware of this, need not even be alive
for a distributor to type 'make world -O3 -msse4.1' (or some such) which
will optimize /everything/ for that processor architecture.

The application on the end-user system sometimes known as the
packet-manager should be able to know where it lives and dive into the
network directory corresponding that architecture. No need for manual
support.

About NFS mount of /usr ... Are you sure that is such a wise decision
these days considering current prices of local storage? What happens
when the user unplugs his laptop and walks away?