Compiling FreeBSD with GCC 4.3+

Mel Flynn mel.flynn+fbsd.questions at mailing.thruhere.net
Tue Apr 21 08:32:08 UTC 2009


Hi David,

On Monday 20 April 2009 21:48:39 David Naylor wrote:

> There has been an article recently published by phoronix
> (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=pcbsd_vs_kubuntu&num=1)
> that compares PC-BSD to Kubuntu.  Kubuntu uses GCC 4.3.3 compared to
> FreeBSD's GCC 4.2.2.  There is a considerable performance difference
> between the two OS's, the article contributes this difference to the
> compiler.

Nice shot in the dark, since except the calculations a lot of these are 
influenced by "journaled FS vs stock UFS".

> In order to check if this is so (and to get the speed improvements of GCC
> 4.3+) one needs to compile the ports (and preferable world/kernel as well)
> with GCC 4.3+.

It's license is incompatible with world/kernel. That said, install lang/gcc43 
and set CC/CXX for ports. World/kernel would be a lot harder. Maybe setting 
WITHOUT_GCC in /etc/src.conf and setting CC/CXX would work, but there's quite 
a few modifications to gcc that aren't in ports lang/gcc, so I have my doubts.

> Is there an easy way to set this up and does anyone know the compatibility
> of world/kernel/ports with GCC 4.3+?
>
> Also has anyone tried this and benchmarked the result?

Not me, but be sure to stick around for the new non-gcc compiler coming to a 
FreeBSD near you. And with the work done by Marcel Molenaar on gpart, 
hopefully we can have ZFS and gjournal as choices in the installer.
-- 
Mel


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