Re: Keeping up to date with -current with a cross-compiler

[Donald Lee <MacPPC2%caution.icompute.com@localhost>]

>Hello,
>
>On Mon, 12 Dec 2011 23:46:09 +0000 (UTC)
>John Klos <john%ziaspace.com@localhost> wrote:
>
>> > I definitely did this successfully a few months ago, but the knowledge 
>> > seems to have leaked out of my brain since then.  I'm crosscompiling 
>> > -current on OS X (because I can actually do the CVS update and build the 
>> > entire distribution in less time than the 9500 takes to do the CVS 
>> > update).
>> 
>> Damn... that's either a fast OS X machine or a slow 9500...
>
>Indeed, IO shouldn't be /that/ slow even on a single 604 with an ancient disk.
>That said, SATA cards and disks are cheap these days, all you need a SCSI disk 
>for is to load the kernel ( and maybe hole a smallish rescue system )
>
>have fun
>Michael

FWIW - when I last upgraded my 68K mac to NetBSD 2.1 (?)  from NetBSD 1.3.1,
which had been running happily and sppedily for years.....
(I don't remember exactly what version I upgraded to)

I noticed a signoficant slowdown on just about everything I ran, and did
some performance analysis.  What I found was that the normal SW
bloat has afflicted NetBSD.  There are lots of things that the newer
systems do, like localization, that are actually rather expensive.  We
just don't notice the cost because the CPu and disks are so
fast.  When you run on a 20 year old 68K machine, though, you notice!

The strace of a 1.3.1 application vs a newer system is a real eye-opener.

I have not tried this lately, but I imagine it's gotten worse.  Everything
in NetBSD has gotten more "feature rich" - i.e. complex - over time, and
that has got to slow things down.

-dgl-