suka's blog

The new Issue of the Red Hat Magazine has an interesting article about "performance tuning with gcc", by one of the gcc devs. Take a look at it, especially if you feel the constant need to use obscure CFLAGS ;)

Some interesting quotes:

In most cases, obtaining the very last nanosecond of performance is not terribly important. Optimization follows a distinct 
curve of diminishing returns. Most applications will thrive with the default transformations done at -O2, and since some of the more 
esoteric flags are seldom used, your code may behave erratically because of latent bugs in your application (for example, the code 
may be violating language aliasing rules).

and:

An even bigger problem is the interactions between optimizing transformations. It is not uncommon for different optimizations to 
interfere or even cancel each other out, so by combining many different flags, you may be causing more harm than good.
                

Title says it all, OpenOffice.org 2.0 is finished at a last. Even better: We already have it in portage, both -bin and the source based version are ready. So what are you waiting for? Emerge it and enjoy all the new goodness! To all openoffice-ximian-users: Don't forget to change to app-office/openoffice-2.0.0! (see more about that in this earlier posting)



Enjoy!

After all the delays, it finally looks as if OpenOffice.org 2.0 will be released any day now :) In preparation for that the first source-based version has hit the tree now, so if you have got some free cpu time left and want to see how much better it is than the 1.1.x-series, just unmask it (by adding >=app-office/openoffice-2.0.0_rc2 to /etc/portage/package.unmask) and go ahead!

SOME FAQS

*) I've been using openoffice-ximian until now, should I wait for a new version of this instead?

No, openoffice-2.0 is the successor of the old openoffice-ximian, it contains everything you learned to love about the -ximian-versions (and lot's more), so go ahead!

*) What would be the best way to upgrade from openoffice-ximian to the new openoffice-2.0 package?

Just for the unlikely ;) situation that something goes wrong with the build make a package of openoffice-ximian:

# quickpkg openoffice-ximian

After that just unmerge openoffice-ximian and emerge openoffice-2.0 (don't forget to unmask it, see above!)

# emerge -C openoffice-ximian && emerge openoffice

Wait, wait more, and wait even longer until it completes (yes, OOo 2.0 takes even longer to build than 1.1.x). If something went wrong, you will still be able to recover the old version (if you built the package), by doing:

# emerge -k =app-office/openoffice-ximian-1.3.16 (Assuming the last version you used was 1.3.16, if not just replace the number)

*) What's the difference between openoffice-bin and openoffice?

openoffice-bin just takes the official binaries provided by the OpenOffice.org-project, while openoffice is built from source. While the -bin has lot's of cool new stuff in relation to 1.1.x (like most of the things you know from the old -ximian-version), the source provides some extra goodies like even better integration for KDE people (KAdressbook-connectivity and Crystal icons), a UI for switching between the different available icon sets and a Gentoo splash screen ;) Though be warned: The source based version takes quite some time to build and needs lot's of diskspace (see below), while the -bin installs quick. So you will have to decide if the extra goodies are worth the extra wait.

*) Ok, so what are the minimum requirements to build OOo 2.0 from source?

You will need 4-6 GByte free on the partition you build it on (by default this is in /var/tmp/portage), also don't bother to try with less than 256 MByte RAM.

*) How long will it take to build?

On my Athlon XP 3200+ (1,5 Gigs RAM), the build of openoffice-2.0.0_rc2 took 7 hours, 17 minutes and 20 seconds

*) Will it build on my AMD64-box?

I'm afraid the answer is: No. This is under heavy development, but didn't get finished in time for 2.0

*) Why does the ebuild for such a heavy package not use distcc?

Cause it tends to break the build, so it is disabled by default. If you really want to try out emerge openoffice with

# WANT_DISTCC="true" emerge openoffice

*) I'm not getting the native GNOME / KDE file selector, but the original OOo one, why is that?

Cause this is the default setting. Go to Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > General and de-select the checkbox for "Use OpenOffice.org dialogs"

*) But I don't want all this KDE / GNOME cruft!

Then just build openoffice with -gnome and -kde in your use flag, and you'll be able to re-uglify your OOo!



Enjoy :)