Problems with ALT_OUTPUTDIR in debug build

[Kelly O'Hair]

ALT_OUTPUTDIR=$(OUTPUTDIR)
doesn't make sense to me.

The makefiles will define OUTPUTDIR to be equal to $(ALT_OUTPUTDIR) if
ALT_OUTPUTDIR is set.
The _OUTPUTDIR is the default build location, when ALT_OUTPUTDIR is not set.

The original idea here in setting ALT_OUTPUTDIR=$(_OUTPUTDIR)-$(DEBUG_NAME)
was to put all the results of a debug build in a completely different
directory, which I still think is right.
I suspect this needs to be:
    ALT_OUTPUTDIR=$(OUTPUTDIR)-$(DEBUG_NAME)

A long time ago, the debug files were built along side the normal files, and
all debug files had that "_g" suffix (e.g. jvm_g.dll, etc.) but we completely
got rid of that because it was a nightmare.
The debug builds then just became a second pass over the source with the same
makefiles but just a different output directory so they didn't mix.
I'm afraid using ALT_OUTPUTDIR=$(OUTPUTDIR) will mix up the optimized files
with the debug files, which won't be good.

-kto

Volker Simonis wrote:
> I would suggest to fix the top-level  Makefile such that
> COMMON_DEBUG_FLAGS uses $(OUTPUTDIR) instead of $(_OUTPUTDIR)
> and doesn't append "-$(DEBUG_NAME)" to ALT_OUTPUTDIR like so:
> 
> COMMON_DEBUG_FLAGS= \
>         DEBUG_NAME=$(DEBUG_NAME) \
>         ALT_OUTPUTDIR=$(OUTPUTDIR) \
>         NO_DOCS=true
> 
> We will than always end up with two directories like so:
> 
> xxx
> xxx-fastdebug
> 
> if we used "ALT_OUTPUTDIR=xxx".
> 
> "xxx-fastdebug" will always be empty (but needed if I follow your
> previous post) so we can remove it after the build. But the user will
> get the output in the directory he specified with ALT_OUTPUTDIR and
> that seems crucial to me.
> 
> What do you think?
> 
> Volker
> 
> On 1/10/08, Kelly O'Hair <Kelly.Ohair at sun.com> wrote:
>> Your final paragraph I think is the answer:
>>
>>    "In my eyes, the cleanest solution would be if ALT_OUTPUTDIR would be honoured
>>     "as is", as the output directory for everything we built, without anything
>>     appended to it. So the developer should be free to choose whatever he wants as
>>     the output directory. And there should be no additional directories created."
>>
>> The ongoing problem has been how to make this work in all cases.
>> But I'm all for it.
>>
>> The generally accepted default for an output directory has been a ./build or
>> ./dist directory at the top of the source tree you are building.
>> With corba, jaxp, jaxws, langtools, hotspot all being independently buildable,
>> what exactly are you recommending to fix this?
>>
>> -kto
>>
>> Volker Simonis wrote:
>>>>> Any comments if this is the right way to do a debug build?
>>>> If it works it's fine. I usually just run 'make debug_build', does that not work?
>>>>
>>> It works, but it has the problems that I detailed in my first mail.
>>> Did you also read that one?
>>> I may seem that my second mail contained the solution for the first
>>> one, but that's not true, its justa partial workaround for the problem
>>> described in the first one:
>>>
>>> http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/build-dev/2008-January/000669.html
>>>
>>> Thanks and regards,
>>> Volker