Potentially Speed up Android with New Compiler Flags

Beginning back in 2007, Android has evolved into quite a mature project. You can learn more about its history by checking out these two articles. Back in 2007, devices weren’t anywhere near as powerful as they are now. They were single core, and had only a few megabytes of RAM. Now it’s 2014, and we are on the verge of seeing the first 64-bit Android devices.

Despite the leaps and bounds that have been made in hardware capabilities, the Android build process has not really seen much optimized since then. It involves using GCC 4.7 when 4.8 is available, and some outdated flags. And interestingly, compiling a kernel uses a different sets of flags than compiling the rest of the ROM.

XDA Recognized Contributor JustArchi released a commit, which according to developer, should increase the speed of AOSP-derived Android builds to upwards of 6x current speed. The commit enables set of flags that are thoughtfully described in the original thread. But before you get too excited and cherry-pick this commit for your own builds, keep in mind that further testing in a wide variety of test scenarios needs to take place before these claims can be validated. Furthermore, you may also find that these flags will result in unexpected issues, as Android has been defaulting to a certain set of flags for quite some time.

You can find the commit and description in the original thread. Have you tried changing these or other flags while compiling? If you end up trying this in your builds, we’re eager to hear your experiences.

 

source: xdadevelopers