On 6 May 2012 01:15, Dimitry T <[email protected]> wrote: > After a long reading I am still confused. On OpenBSD FAQ recommend to use packages, most users speak the same, but some speak that it is safer to compile programs from ports and then programs have better performance. Did I get the better performance of the program on my hardware if i compile that program on my hardware from ports? I try to compare md5 of package compiled from ports with package downloaded from package server, and values b b do not match. Surely I wrong somewhere, but I would like someone to explain me packages vs ports.
If you wanted to get better performance, then you would have to change something for your compile, so that it's different from what the creator of the corresponding package did. In other words, you'd have to fiddle with various knobs. Particularly on modern hardware, the performance gain you might achieve by doing this is likely going to be slight and probably unnoticeable if there even is any gain at all. However, by fiddling with all and sundry knobs and parameters, and leaving out various stuff, you'll stand an excellent chance of subtly or not so subtly breaking stuff and @misc generally loves it when people who have shot themselves in the foot by doing something unnecessary and ill advised come asking for help. Basically and I'm not sure if it was Nick who first said it in the FAQ somewhere basically, if you break things, you get to keep all the pieces. I seem to remember seeing this mentioned on @misc a real long time ago: http://funroll-loops.info/ And I believe this is relevant as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCIF6JF1O5U The OpenBSD packages. Pre-tuned by Canadian engineers. As for security, since the Openbsd.org packages and ports both come from the same source, there's no security advantage of ports over packages unless you don't trust OpenBSD.org and actually read all of the source code you compile (and, by the way, do the same for your whole compiler toolchain). There are all kinds of reasons why the hashes of your self-compiled ports and pre-made packaged might not match. In particular, your compiler toolchain might slightly differ from what the package maintainer used. Even using an identical toolchain on different hardware could in some cases produce different results. With larger and more complex compiles, I would expect it to be relatively rare that the actual hashes will end up matching. For learning about the process, fiddling and compiling and hacking away with mad abandon can be great. But for when you're just interested in running a quality end product? Heck, no. regards, --ropers
