I looked up specifically examples of this and didn’t find answers, they’re buried in general discussions about why compiling may be better than pre-built. The reasons I found were control of flags and features, and optimizations for specific chips (like Intel AVX or ARM Neon), but to what degree do those apply today?
The only software I can tell benefits greatly from building from source, is ffmpeg since there are many non-free encoders decoders and upscalers that can be bundled, and performance varies a lot between devices due to which of them is supported by the CPU or GPU. For instance, Nvidia hardware encoders typically produce higher quality video for similar file sizes than ones from Intel AMD or Apple. Software encoders like x265 has optimizations for AVX and NEON (SIMD extensions for CPUs).
Obviously only for important cases, like compiling custom insults into
sudo. :)I read that compiled software can be more optimized for our devices, but my devices that could benefit the most from compiled software are the ones that are inviable to compile software with.
If you’re seriously wanting to compile optimized software for those devices, you would want to investigate “cross compiling”
I’m not really serious, but I’d consider making a test or two, thanks.
Nginx has a number of compile-time optional features and they aren’t all enabled in the pre-built packages. For example, the ability to echo back HTTP requests for debugging.
lol, saw title, came to say ffmpeg, read body, it’s your prime example!
I can’t remember what flag or feature it is I’ve more than once found myself having to build from source to enable, but there is one!
Anecdotally: the night Mozilla builds were a godsend when I couldn’t afford decent hardware.
Also anecdotally and professionally: when you have a client that insists on using source like most software companies do nowadays; you can use that source along with something like a hash to keep them honest and prevent them from leaving you holding the bag when shtf. (ask me how I know this works. Lol)
In order to use a bit of Windows only software for controlling my CNC machine, I have to use a Wine patch that is only available in source form. That means building Wine from source if I want to use my CNC