Latest blog posts
Keep up to date with the latest development updates to Serpent OS
Performance Corner: Faster Builds, Smaller Packages
Performance Corner is a new series where we highlight to you some changes in Serpent OS that may not be obvious, but
show a real improvement. Performance is a broad term that also covers efficiency, so things like making files smaller,
making things faster or reducing power consumption. In general things that are unquestionably improvements with little
or no downside. While the technical details may be of interest to some, the main purpose is to highlight the real
benefit to users and/or developers that will make using Serpent OS a more enjoyable experience. Show me the numbers!
Friday, November 5, 2021
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Optimal File Locality
File locality in this post refers to the order of files in our content payload. Yes that’s right, we’re focused on the
small details and incremental improvements that combined add up to significant benefits! All of this came about from
testing the efficiency of content payload in moss-format and how well it compared against a plain tarball. One day
boulder was looking extremely inefficient and then retesting the following day was proving to be extremely efficient
without any changes made to boulder or moss-format. What on Earth was going on?
Monday, October 4, 2021
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Unpacking the Build Process: Part 2
Part 2 looks at the core of the build process, turning the source into compiled code. In Serpent OS this is handled by
our build tool boulder. It is usually the part of the build that takes the longest, so where speed ups have the most
impact. How long it takes is largely down to the performance of your compiler and what compile flags you are building
with.
Monday, September 20, 2021
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Unpacking the Build Process: Part 1
While the build process (or packaging as it’s commonly referred to) is largely hidden to most users, it forms a fundamental and important aspect to the efficiency of development. In Serpent OS this efficiency also extends to users via source based builds for packages you may want to try/use that aren’t available as binaries upstream.
Wednesday, August 25, 2021
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