OpenJDK on Solaris Dev Express 1/2008?

[Kelly O'Hair]

Andrew John Hughes wrote:
> 2008/6/4 Kelly O'Hair <Kelly.Ohair at sun.com>:
>> Not sure what you mean by the Sun Studio trap.
>>
> 
> I'm referring back to the Java trap - before Sun released their JDK
> under the GPL,
> it was possible to have applications under a Free Software license
> written in Java
> which couldn't be run in a Free environment because they would only work under
> the proprietary JDK.  GNU Classpath was the community's attempt to free Java
> from this trap.
> 
> Only being able to build the OpenJDK using the proprietary Sun Studio
> compiler on Solaris creates
> a similar issue, though the scope of the problem is fortunately more
> restricted.  I'm not sure OpenSolaris
> itself can even be built with GCC, which is an even worse issue - it's
> not truly Free Software if it can only
> be built with proprietary tools.

Ah... the pure "open source" trap. Now I understand.

The Sun Studio compilers are free, not yet open source, but they are free.
Not sure what their schedule is for open sourcing.

So this situation is not as bad as Windows. :^(

> 
>> Each release of a compiler requires some kind of work to the Makefiles,
>> happened with gcc4, and will happen with SS12 and VS2008.
>>
> 
> While I can understand some changes being necessary for major releases
> (e.g. the move from GCC 3 to 4),
> every single release shouldn't need work; this suggest an issue with
> the build system itself.

Well, when they get to the point where a native compiler release can be
done without a single bug or compiler option change, I'll probably be dead,
and well decomposed. :^{

The Hotspot C++ code in particular pushes the native compilers hard, using
very high optimization levels, and is itself a test of a C++ compiler.
Even if you get past the build, strange runtime interactions between the
Hotspot generated code and the C++ generated code will test all the assumptions
made by both the optimization teams working on these very disjoint products.

It's often not a question of quality of code of one or the other, but the
complex interactions between the two.

-kto

> 
>> -kto
>>
>> Andrew John Hughes wrote:
>>>> GCC will NOT work under Solaris/SPARC, and I'm pretty darned sure it
>>>> won't
>>>> work under Solaris/x86 or Solaris/x64.   There are some significant
>>>> GCC-isms
>>>> which the JDK does not currently support.
>>>>
>>>> That said, it would not be terribly difficult to modify the source to get
>>>> GCC to work, but you'd definitely have to spend a bit of time doing so.
>>> Maybe the next logical campaign is to avoid the Sun Studio trap then... :)
> 
> 
>