On 12/11/25 at 20:27 +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote: > On Wed, Nov 05, 2025 at 08:42:08PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: > > Hi, > > Hi Lucas, > > > On 26/10/25 at 13:21 +0100, Bastian Blank wrote: > > > Hi > > > > > > We never did a real discussion about architecture baselines before, but I > > > think > > > we should do that. We also don't have any guidelines what we as Debian > > > want to > > > actually support. But given that we are a general purpose distribution, > > > we > > > have to find a balance. > > > > This thread only discusses bumping baselines, but I wonder if we should > > consider other ways to provide architecture-optimized versions of some > > packages? > >... > > I did already discuss in [1] two additional topics, that should be > prerequisites for any productive discussion: > > 1. Lack of data > > I have not seen any data discussed here on the benefits that could be a > basis for an actual discussion. > > Like what are the actual performance differences between v1/v2/v3/v4 > on amd64? > > Which steps (if any) bring large performance improvements? > Are these performance improvements for everything and/or are there > large benefits that are limited to few packages? > > I do remember how 20 years ago when Gentoo was new, people spent days > watching their computer compiling everything perfectly optimized for > their system - only to discover that it didn't make a noticeable > difference. > > 2. Don't restrict the discussion/data to architecture baselines > > How much performance does security hardening cost? > What are the performance and size effects of building packages > optimized for size instead of speed? > What performance benefits would making x32 a (partial?) release > architecture bring? > ... > > We are already providing a non-PIE version of the Python interpreter for > users who need it for performance reasons, and it is for example > possible that the benefits of providing packages without hardening (for > situations where hardening is not necessary) might bring larger benefits > than architecture-optimized versions. > > Would x32 optimized for v3 be the best option for many use cases? > > Any discussion of possible solutions has to start with data showing what > changes might actually bring sufficient benefits for being worth the > effort.
Right. There are some benchmarks results at https://www.phoronix.com/review/ubuntu-x86-64-v3-benchmark Also, there are at least 4 criterias to evaluate solutions: - performance gain - loss of HW support - per-package work needed (hwcaps is bad for this) - archive/mirror impact (architecture variant is bad for this) A tentative summary: | Solution | Performance | HW support | Pkg maint work | Archive size | | -------------------- | ----------- | ---------- | -------------- | ------------ | | baseline bump | +++ | --- | little impact | no impact | | architecture variant | +++ | no impact | little impact | --- | | per-pkg solutions | + | no impact | --- | no impact | Lucas
