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just for testing..new version (Developers)

posted by Rugxulo Homepage, Usono, 16.11.2013, 01:43

> Hi at all,
>
> i've just posted in
>
> http://perotti.ic.cz/links/linkspent2.7z
>
> the new release of links 2.8 optimized for pentium machine WITH SSL
> support.
>
> Testers and comments are welcome!
>
> snip---------
>
> #!/bin/sh
>
> CFLAGS="-march=pentiumpro -mtune=generic -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer
> -frename-registers -fweb -Wall -Wextra -Wno-unused-parameter
> -Wstrict-prototypes -Wmissing-prototypes -Wmissing-declarations
> -ffast-math"
> export CFLAGS
> ./configure --enable-graphics --without-utf8
> snip-------
I keep wanting to reply but always flake out at the last minute. Computers are a delicate art, and I'm not claiming to be an expert.

I've not rebuild Links. I had no reason to do so. And I also don't have (or know how to setup) a packet driver for any of my native DOS installs. Hence, I've only tested Links under VirtualBox + FreeDOS + emulated packet driver. I don't have 32-bit XP anymore either, so I can't compile it (and certainly not in raw DOS, not without heavy patching, ./configure doesn't work there) except maybe cross-compiling (Ozkan's build) or DOSEMU. Presumably DOSEMU would work best, but I've not been motivated enough. (I would be almost curious to know what Mikulas used, but I somehow doubt he wants my email queries, even if he is apparently sympathetic to DOS and DJGPP. Most people just aren't helpful.)

http://artax.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~mikulas/links-dos/

Problem #1: Deciding whether to recompile or not. I'd say no since there is already a prebuilt package. Well, and also, all that ./configure *nix bullcrap is such a pain. So it's not like it's easy. Maybe if you knew it was too slow for your own use (or just really really bored), it might be worthwhile. However, you keep saying "pentium", which normally means i586, which is not supported by most people (e.g. Fedora) anymore. "pentiumpro"? I seriously doubt you have a real PPro sitting around, but who knows. And "-mtune=generic" probably doesn't mean what you think it means. Okay, so both of those (more or less) just mean "i686", so you could (roughly) just say "-march=i686" and achieve the same result. "generic" usually means modern and popular machines only (presumably Core2 and friends), which is contradictory to "pentiumpro", which is quite old by now. If you're only optimizing for yourself, I'd suggest "-march=native". But since you're redistributing this .EXE (though, no offense, I don't see the advantage), I wouldn't recommend anything using i686 (CMOVxx), and I heavily doubt such optimizations are worth the incompatibility for older machines. So honestly, for redistributing, I'd suggest "-mtune=generic" only, nothing else.

Problem #2: Recompiling. What dependencies? Didn't Mikulas patch some things (e.g. Watt-32)? It would've probably been better to keep the changes (in patch) separate than having yet another .ZIP to confuse people. The .ZIPs of OpenSSL and Watt-32 on DJGPP mirrors don't have such patches, and that will just confuse people even more. I've not looked, though, so I don't know how necessary those changes were. But at least he recently (Oct. 28) put "all-packages/" subdir on his site, which has (presumably) all the DJGPP packages you'd need to rebuild (though I question the point of some of the specific versions and utils).

Problem #3: GNU AutoTools don't even work as well as they used to, esp. for DJGPP and other non-supported, non-POSIX targets. If it worked, I wouldn't complain, but it can't even do that. Well, what did you expect, it relies on way too many *nix-isms (by design) to ever work anywhere else. If you really care about portability to non-POSIX systems, don't rely so heavily on POSIX tools (obviously?? but people still do it!).

I'm not even sure I understand how to use it correctly, so this may be wrong, but this is how I weakly thought it was supposed to be used:

./configure CPPFLAGS="-I/watt32/inc -L/watt32/lib" LDLIBS="-lwatt" CFLAGS="-g -O2 -mtune=generic" --enable-graphics --without-utf8

That's just an example, obviously you have to adjust it for SSL as well. You really don't even need to worry about CFLAGS, it should be good enough for average use by default. Anyways, if direly needed, just manually tweak the resulting (generated) Makefiles later. Or do 'make CFLAGS="-g -O2 -mtune=\"generic\"' or whatever.

I don't know if this helps. I don't know if I said it correctly. Maybe I'll try rebuilding later, but I'm not getting my hopes up. Ideally Mikulas should "probably" put all the generated Makefiles (config.h, etc.) in a separate .ZIP (i.e. preconfigured) so that normal DJGPP developers don't have to "./configure" (since that is such a pain).

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