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Fedora Stakeholders Debate Idea Of "-O3" Optimized Packages

Following the announcement yesterday that Ubuntu 25.04 will default to the -O3 optimization level with GCC for its Debian package builds, Fedora stakeholders have begun debating the merits of switching to the -O3 optimization level or not instead of the existing -O2 optimization level default.

Some Red Hat engineers like Jakub Jelinek of their compiler team have called it a "very bad idea" due to the code size increase from -O3, speed gains not being guaranteed, etc. No decisions have been made yet plus the fact of needing to go through the FESCo approval process. It's looking like Fedora switching to -O3 likely won't have enough interest but hopefully this discussion can lead to work on employing other compiler optimization techniques for Fedora packages.

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