Heads Up: JDK 7 Linux platforms moving to Fedora 9

[Kelly O'Hair]

I'm just a small (maybe medium sized) cog in the machinery around here. ;^)

Mark Wielaard wrote:
> Hi Kelly,
> 
> On Fri, 2008-12-19 at 14:21 -0800, Kelly O'Hair wrote:
>> The JDK7 early access binary snapshot builds are built from the
>> OpenJDK7 sources, plus additional files and repositories we either
>> cannot or haven't opened up yet (for various reasons).
> 
> Do you have a list of these additional files and repositories? Is there
> anything for which there still isn't a free replacement available?
> 

Priority one, we wanted to either open source or get open source
replacements for the binary plugs (openjdk6 only has snmp left?).
I know we need to apply these changes to the openjdk7 repos now.
And we have a way to build without snmp that we will try and put in
place in openjdk7, and maybe get to the point of being able to
build both openjdk6 and openjdk7 without those annoying binary plugs.

Tests that have not been open sourced require a review for possible
legal issues, this takes time, an annoyingly long time.

Some sources have been slowly opened up, I think hotspot added the linux
sparc sources which used to be closed sources.
So some of the sources are moving to the open area as the review
process and decisions are made. Yes, progress is slow, but it is progress.

The plugin remains the hot potato. I won't go there. :^(

>> This build process has been created over the years around the Sun
>> JDK product releases, the official build process takes many hours
>> and involves things like virus scans etc.
>> Not sure it's worth exposing, seems low priority to me anyway.
> 
> Yeah, it probably depends on the etc. But build systems have a tendency
> to get entangled with all kinds of local setups and installation issues.
> 

This one is extremely dependent on the internal Sun network, and is
mostly home grown. I just can't see any value in spending our time
opening this up.

> Having a standardized shared build system that people can copy and setup
> for their own particular environment does have its advantages though. It
> helps the community feel in control of their own niches.
> 

It has been my opinion that we should invest in setting up a Hudson
(http://hudson.dev.java.net) system (or equivalent open source
build setup). But the idea and any effort is in a pre-infancy stage.
If and when we did something like that, we would certainly make
the configuration or setup procedure public.

>> To guarantee that a OpenJDK7 build only contained OpenJDK7
>> we would have to do a completely separate build.
>> Justifying this is difficult when the standard open source
>> procedure is to effectively roll-yer-own, not use any built bits
>> from Sun.
> 
> Yes, that is the route we took with IcedTea of course. But now that we
> have proven that you can bootstrap the whole system starting with only
> free bits it would be nice to unify the standard builds again though, so
> that the default is the same for all of the community.

The Sun JDK product build procedures will likely always be different
I can't see them ever being completely the same.
When you have something that works, it's hard to justify tearing it
apart and risking the stability you have.

-kto

> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Mark
>