Re: RFC: Fedora Extras shipping ix86 optimized rpms?

[Jakub Jelinek <jakub redhat com>]

On Wed, Sep 01, 2004 at 11:23:01AM +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > But there .i686.rpm doesn't help you,
> Can you explain?

Because you can install .i686.rpm on CPUs that don't have SSE or SSE2.

> Packing-wise, this has several disadvantages.
> 1. You'd have to compile library packages twice.
> 2. Many packages contain both libraries and applications, so you'd have
> to apply special measures to assure that applications still get
> -march=i386 compiled. 
> 3. It would almost double the size of i386.rpms (These sse2 libs would
> have to be part of i386.rpms) - Is it worth it?

If it is worth to have the SSE/SSE2 versions at all (i.e. the gains are
big enough), then yes, it is worth it.
You certainly can't put binaries/libraries requiring SSE or even SSE2
without any fallback for earlier CPUs into neither i386.rpm nor i686.rpm.

	Jakub