[ovs-dev] [ovs-dev 1/3] ovs-dev.py: Add aggressive compile optimization options.

Ethan Jackson ethan at nicira.com
Mon Sep 8 19:51:11 UTC 2014


> Is there any point to testing OVS in a configuration that we won't
> distribute?

This is a subject in which there could legitimately be many points of
view, but I'll take a stab at explaining how I think about it.

To answer your question: In general no, but with DPDK yes.

If you look at how stock OVS is typically deployed, a vendor (Redhat,
Debian, etc), builds it in a portable fashion and distributes binaries
to whoever wants them.  In this case, I completely agree that these
sorts of compiler optimizations don't make sense.

With DPDK I think the situation is slightly different.  The DPDK
libraries are specifically designed for people to heavily tune the
applications built on top of them, and I suspect the people interested
in OVS on DPDK at this point are the same.  To the extent that OVS on
DPDK is deployed, it will be in very specific circumstances where
performance is critical and these sorts of compile time optimizations
are typical.

Anyways that's my thinking on it.  If you prefer, I could make it an
option, but for the dev script I don't think it really matters that
much.  Keep in mind that real numbers we publish are based on official
builds which don't use this script.

Ethan



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