testing consistency

[Kaveh R. Ghazi]

 > Jeffrey A Law writes:
 > 
 > > I'd really prefer not to make it too easy to override BOOT_CFLAGS;
 > > remember we want both ourselves and the average joe using egcs to build
 > > in the same manner -- making BOOT_CFLAGS easy to override defeats that
 > > purpose to some extent.
 > 
 > OTOH, it makes it harder to test alternate configurations, and there
 > are certainly people who'd like to perform tests by compiling gcc with
 > look unrolling (Kaveh Ghazi does, as far as I remember), higher
 > optimization levels (as I do), etc.  The average joe would not set
 > BOOT_CFLAGS at all; I think anyone who intends to perform more
 > complete automated testing (like me) would be interested in being able
 > to bootstrap gcc with different flags.
 > 
 > I understand your concern about making sure gcc is tested in standard
 > conditions, but there's no reason for making it harder to test it more
 > completely, is there?
 > -- 
 > Alexandre Oliva
 
	I completely agree.

	I've always considered it a bad practice that up until
recently configuring any package with autoconf passed only -g -O to
gcc.  Ditto for BOOT_CFLAGS when building gcc.  Cheers to whoever had
enough faith in gcc to up the default CFLAGS produced by autoconf. :-)

	Its great that -O2 is used by default now.  But if we don't
test the >O2 opts more, we can't expect them to get safe enough to
use.  Okay, maybe they're avoided because they don't always produce
better code, but I think they're also marginalized because of the
perception that they aren't ready for prime time.  We can't change
this except by using them.

	I'd urge _more_ testing with higher BOOTCFLAGS.  Eg, inline
functions are very important in c++.  We should be testing -O3 or
-finline-functions more.

	To make testing easier and encourage more usage, I'd like to
see a -Oall with every possible optimization flag thrown in.  (I can
agree that choosing -funroll-loops vs. -funroll-all-loops is
debatable.)  Maybe a new -O4 contains -funroll-loops and -Oall
contains -funroll-all-loops.  I can provide a patch if this is desired.

		Comments?
		--Kaveh
--
Kaveh R. Ghazi				Project Manager
ghazi@caip.rutgers.edu			ICon CMT Corp.