Optimization flags
When you are running a FreeBSD system, or a system derived from FreeBSD, or even a system running NetBSD or OpenBSD, you have to option of recompiling the system source if you wish. With FreeBSD, this is the primary way in which the system is upgraded between version numbers, in fact.
One of the wonderful things about BSD based operating systems is the way they handle optimization flags. These are specifications for how the compile is to be called so that the compiler optimizes each file that is being compiled using them.
The one I like the most is the -O flag, which stands for “optimize”. This tells the compiler itself to try to make the results as lean and efficient as possible.