gcc is plenty fast at lower optimization levels. And if you want to get funky about it, <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bellard.org&#x2F;tcc&#x2F;tccboot.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bellard.org&#x2F;tcc&#x2F;tccboot.html</a> shows that tcc can compile Linux fast enough for a source-only bootloader. ;-)<p>(The chief downside of compiling with less than gcc -O2 is that dataflow analysis is not done at lower optimization levels, which means that you&#x27;ll miss some &quot;unused variable&quot; and&#x2F;or &quot;dead store&quot; warnings.)