Upcoming OpenJDK infrastructure projects

[Erik Trimble]

The first suggestion makes a lot of sense, though I'd have to say it's
non-trivial, unfortunately. We're certainly exploring it as a possible
option.


Changing from Cygwin to any other shell is probably not going to happen.
Frankly, unless there seems to be a _very_ compelling reason to do so,
the time and effort required to do this change is better spent
simplifying the Windows build itself.  Cygwin provides an entire
development system, and supporting more than one such environment is
really not worth the effort, in my opinion.  It would also seem not to
make sense to require TWO separate sets of software to build the JDK
(both Cygwin and MSYS). 


On Tue, 2007-11-06 at 21:32 -0800, Dan Fabulich wrote:
> I'm not sure if this request is in-scope for "OpenJDK infrastructure 
> projects", but I'd like to pipe up in favor of simplifying the 
> Windows build experience.
> 
> Specifically...
> 
> 1) Update the build to work with Visual C++ 2005 Express, the free 
> (no-charge) version of the Visual Studio C++ compiler.
> 
> The fix isn't too hard, but it requires a bit of figuring: 
> http://bugs.sun.com/view_bug.do?bug_id=6523947
> 
> 2) Provide support for building under MSYS make/shell, perhaps instead of 
> Cygwin.
> 
> Cygwin make doesn't handle paths of the form "c:/code/openjdk" and has 
> stated that they intend not to; they recommend using the MinGW MSYS make 
> instead of Cygwin make for these purposes.
> 
> http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2006-07/msg00671.html
> 
> The Mozilla project updated their Cygwin-only build to work under MSYS, 
> and now offer a convenient installer to set the whole thing up. 
> Something like that for OpenJDK would be fantastic, though it's just a 
> dream at this point.  :-)
> 
> http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Windows_Build_Prerequisites
> 
> (Note that I DON'T mean that we should support building with MinGW gcc; 
> that'd be cool, but IMO it's not necessary to build Windows software using 
> a Free-as-in-speech compiler; using a free-as-in-beer compiler is fine for 
> non-free platforms.)
> 
> I'd hoped to begin work on these myself at some point, though I'm pretty 
> busy yet. :-(
> 
> -Dan


Note that I don't speak for Sun, the OpenJDK project, or anyone but
myself on these issues, and can't make any promises.


-- 
Erik Trimble
Java System Support
Mailstop:  usca14-102
Phone:  x17195
Santa Clara, CA
Timezone: US/Pacific (GMT-0800)