3 ms·

but you can just use Mozilla's official binary packages, which are tested to work with a specific set of libraries, and I think are built with higher optimizati

but you can just use Mozilla's official binary packages, which are tested to work with a specific set of libraries, and I think are built with higher optimization levels (O3/pgo) than what distros conservatively do (O2) because of cargo-culting early-2000 gentoo forums (that was the case a few years ago, not 100% sure it is still the case today as I could not find easily the current release flags).

progval 7y ago
Mozilla doesn't provide binary packages for all architectures and OSs supported by Nix/NixOS Maintainers also sometimes need to patch software to conform to their distribution's norm. For example, Debian patches it to accept extensions installed with APT. And I'm glad distribution maintainers always recompile software themselves, it helps making sure: 1. binaries are really made from the open source code (I know, it's not bullet-proof) 2. it's actually humanly possible to actually compile it from source (my pet peeve in this area is Kafka: it's used everywhere, but no one seems to know how to actually fully compile it from sources anymore)
- danieldk 7y ago
  I fully agree. It should be said that nixpkgs also provides the firefox-bin derivation, which is just want the grandparent suggested. But there is a lot of value in checking that software builds are actually reproducible from the sources.
- BlueTemplar 7y ago
  > Kafka Name checks out...