Hi dwould,
I think the benefit is additive!!!
Simple way to do this is is add CFLAGS="-O2" to the ./configure line (along with the other necessary params), then 'make clean all' or build the .deb file. This replaces the defaults CFLAGS="-g -O2"
(I forget how -g and -O2 interact, I vaguely remember -g reducing the optimization but that was from my 1990's Unix work...)

Gerrit