Recommended GCC version?

[Andrew John Hughes]

>
> > The reality is that people aren't going to download and build a
> > specific copy of GCC just for OpenJDK, and distros will certainly want
> > it to build with the GCC they use for everything else.
> >
>
>  But are the Distros expecting/assuming that everything will work fine with
> their version of GCC? Who is expected to have done the testing? If something
> goes wrong who would be expected to fix it? Would the Distros patch the
> OpenJDK code with a workaround for their GCC version? Or would they grab a
> known working GCC version and rebuild using that?
>

Patching is already being done; I believe IcedTea includes patches to
allow builds to be done on newer versions of GCC.  In the near future,
I guess most distros will ship with 4.3.  Fedora, I believe, has
already moved towards this.  Tests are being run using the jtreg test
cases and the Mauve test suite.  The version shipped with Fedora has
also just passed the TCK (congratulations to them, btw.)

>  Right now the reality is that these alternate compiler versions have not
> undergone extensive testing for the OpenJDK. Over time that will hopefully
> change, but for now - caveat emptor!
>

I agree it would be simpler to aim towards a minimum set of supported
compilers, but we should work together to decide what this is.  The
reason I replied to begin with is I occasionally get the implicit
feeling from some mails (if not intentional) that there is still a
separation between 'us' (sun) and 'them' (the community).  Clearly Sun
has made decisions about which compiler to support internally in the
past, but such decisions now need to involve the major players that
such support will affect.

I believe this is the distros; you will always get individual users
who try some bizarre configuration.  That's life ...

A final note should also be made that of course new architectures and
platforms, being targeted by the porting project, may require further
compiler versions.

>  Cheers,
>  David Holmes
>
>


-- 
Andrew :-)

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