[ardour-users] specifying the architecture

Steven Chamberlain steven at pyro.eu.org
Wed Jul 11 05:03:12 PDT 2007


Dragan Noveski wrote:
> ARCH: Set architecture-specific compilation flags by hand (all flags as 
> 1 argument)

> my kernel is compiled with prozessor type 'pentium m'.

Hi,

I don't think it should be necessary to provide any compiler flags (via
the ARCH setting) as most things will be auto-detected.  It might be
possible to specify additional flags via ARCH to compile a binary which
is better-optimised for your processor and runs faster, or it might make
no difference at all.  Some compiler flags might even uncover bugs in
the program or in the compiler and cause crashes.

I've had some success recompiling various programs and libraries with
additional compiler flags, and I've seen measurable performance
increases.  With ardour though, I experienced frequent crashes with a
binary which had been compiled with optimisations specified with the
ARCH setting.

A full list of the compiler flags will be in the man page for gcc.

There is a webpage which lists 'safe' compiler options to use on
different processors; these shouldn't cause any crashes but might give
better performance:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/Safe_Cflags#Pentium_M.28Centrino.29.2FCeleron_M

On that page, the CFLAGS are what you would specify as the ARCH option, eg:
  scons ARCH="-march=pentium3 -msse2 -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"
This should compile a binary which is a little more optimised for a
Pentium M but should still be stable.

Hope that helps,
-- 
Steven Chamberlain
steven at pyro.eu.org



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