From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2005-11-29T01:12:14+09:00
Subject: Re: building ruby for speed: wise or otherwise?

Hugh Sasse wrote:
> My active record based script is taking longer than I'd like.
> While I wait for approval to get a faster machine :-) I'm wondering
> about rebuilding ruby 1.8.2 (which I have now) and changing the
> CFLAGS from the default 
> CFLAGS=-g -O2
> to 
> CFLAGS=-O3
> or something of the sort.  I'm presently using gcc-3.4.3 on
> Solaris9.  Has anyone done this and if so is there anything I should
> watch out for?  ISTR reported problems when building other packages
> with high -O values in the past. 
> 
> Would the answer be different for gcc-4.0.2?

If gcc-4.x is an option, try it. Anecdotally, it's substantially faster
than 3.x. In fact, it's one less reason for me to use msvc on windows:
code compiled with gcc-4.0 (with -O2) turns out to be faster than msvc
for some numerically intensive simulation code running as a ruby
extension, whereas msvc was faster than gcc-3.x output code. YMMV.

-- 
      vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407