hi,
i use kernel 2.6.9 with the processor as pentium m (centrino). i believe that is i686. when i used checkinstall on a compiled app, it displayed "i386." echo $CFLAGS returns nothing. does that mean if i just do the default ./configure, i will not get the binaries that are optimized for my computer? shouldn't CFLAGS use the setting from the kernel?
anyway, i then tried
so during make, i could see that gcc was called with the -march=i686 flag. however, checkinstall still displayed "i386." i'm guessing checkinstall is wrong, and the compiled binaries are optimized for my computer.
thanks.

Checkinstall doesn't detect anything - it just sets the default name - check /etc/checkinstall/checkinstallrc and change ARCHITECTURE. 'echo $CFLAGS' should only produce something if you've exported that to the environment for general compiling. But, yeah, if gcc was picking it up, it's all good.

i think i will export CFLAGS. it seems like a good idea, and i believe it's not going to cause any harm (because gentoo has it in /etc/make.conf for all compilations--i believe). if anyone sees anything wrong/dangerous with my thinking, please point it out.
thanks.

Well, mplayer likes to make up its own flags and there may be another program or two that doesn't like it, but it's easier to unset it on the rare exception that constantly set it for most things. So AFAIK, it's a good plan. (I do it, anyway. )