gcc compile-time performance take 2

[Dara Hazeghi <dhazeghi at pacbell dot net>]

Hello,

well I had no idea the thread would spark a firestorm of debate (is flamewar 
the correct term?). In any case there are a number of opinions about the 
matter. My point (although it seems to now be submerged in a discussion of 
what is acceptable development hardware) is that things have gotten slower. I 
am not particularly optimistic that gcc 3.2 is going to be faster or equal in 
this respect to gcc 2.95, and I think it is rather unrealistic to think so. 
What I would like to see though, is some method of ensuring that gcc 3.2 is 
not particularly slower, given the same optimizations, than gcc 3.1. To this 
end, I think Andi Kleen's comments are right on the mark.

So my suggestion (again, as a non-developer, though a frequent user) would be 
to time the SPEC builds. Considering that Andreas Jaeger and Diego Novillo 
are already building and running the benchmarks, it seems that a few tweaks 
to the scripts in question would easily allow one to follow compile-time 
performance on top of run-time performance.

Comments, ideas or nasty remarks? Also, where might I find the scripts in 
question (doesn't seem to be in the standard gcc checkout, or the release 
tarballs). Thanks.

Dara