cvs commit: src/share/mk bsd.cpu.mk bsd.dep.mk bsd.lib.mkbsd.sys.mksrc/sys/dev/aic7xxx/aicasm Makefile

[Scott Long]

Tom Rhodes wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Mar 2004 20:27:20 +0100
> des at des.no (Dag-Erling Smørgrav) wrote:
> 
> 
>>Tom Rhodes <trhodes at FreeBSD.org> writes:
>>
>>>"David O'Brien" <obrien at freebsd.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>>I'll also strongly push back on ever using 'icc' as part of the release
>>>>build.
>>>
>>>push back a release build.  Are you worried that the 'rumors?' of
>>>better, more optimized binaries going to hurt the AMD effort?
>>
>>No, he's rightfully worried that we might end up with a release that
>>doesn't run on AMD hardware.  And you're trolling.
> 
> 
> I can understand that, DES, David.  I just wanted to gather more
> information.  Sorry if I seemed like a troll, that wasn't my intent.
> 

Ok, let's hear from the release guys.  Oh, that's me!

First of all, while the project has a license to run icc on a cluster
computer and release the outputed binaries, does that mean that the
project can distribute icc in the base system, or on one of the release
cd's?  My understanding is 'no'.

So let's say that I hack up the release makefiles so that they use icc,
and produce an icc-optimized release.  What's the first thing that many
people do right after they install their system?  They compile a new
kernel.  Since icc isn't available to them when they do this, they've
lost the benefit of what was distributed on the CD.

Now this all assumes that release CD's are built on cluster machines.
In fact, none of them are for any architecture.  I, and the others who
build the other arches, usually build them on local hardware so that we
can QA the results before uploading them to ftp-master.  So unless we
all get icc licenses for our local machines, using it isn't going to
happen.

Also, I don't know if David's concerns about icc having different
behaviour on Intel vs AMD chips are true, but I generally trust him on
these matters since it's his job (both real job and project job) to
know.  It's also within the realm of possibilities for Intel.  So this
is yet another strike against using it in a release.

I think I mentioned this before, but a nice compromise would be to put
a set of icc-compiled binaries in an obvious location on the ftp and
web sites, and encourage people to try them on their already-installed
systems.  Maybe someday we could even have enough computing horsepower
to do on-demand kernel compiles for people.

Scott