[gillianseed]

>How large is your sample size there? I have only seen -O3 in the default makefiles of audio/video encoders. Those tend to be a natural fit for -O3

Well I very much implied 'performance-oriented' programs as we where discussing 'performance' generated by compiler options, which indeed are a natural fit for -O3.

For which my 'sample size' would be software like encoders, archivers, emulators, 3d renderers etc.

Obviously there's little point in using -O3 on your text editor (yes, extreme example), basically for any non performance-oriented software -O3 will likely only serve to increase the binary size as any potential gains will be unnoticable.

>I wish! Packagers love to fool around with the upstream sources and makefiles to make them conform to whatever "standards" they have.

Not really my experience with Arch packages, but of course I haven't looked at the PKGBUILDS for even 1% of all available packages, basically only those performance oriented packages on which I rely.