Ability to override compiler from environment

[Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen]

Dmitri Trembovetski skrev  den 25-06-2008 19:46:
>
>   Hi,
>
>   did you mean to CC the list in your reply?
No, I just wanted to write to the list.  Is the "CC list with no 
reply-to header" the traditional way it's done inside Sun?  My fingers 
just do a Reply so I get it wrong - oh well, I only did it twice today.

>> The configure script runs a lot of small code snippets and store the 
>> results as a single configuration file.  Typically you need to 
>> identify stuff like "what is the name of an awk which has the 
>> extensions we need?", "is the library X available?", "do we have a 
>> working compiler toolchain?" etc. You may want to try compiling gcc 
>> (use "configure; make bootstrap") or Emacs ("configure; make") to see 
>> how this works in practice.
>
>   I do know how configure works. My question was whether anyone
>   tried to build icedtea on windows. The answer is apparently not.
My apologies.  It wasn't clear to me.

Are all these Makefiles currently in the tree manually maintained?

>>>   It's my understanding that Windows is the greatest pain in
>>>   terms of build environment. 
>> It appears so.  I would appreciate hearing from those familiar with 
>> that environment how this would be done there?
>
>   You'd have to wait until our build master Kelly comes back from
>   vacation. Currently jdk build on windows uses either MKS tookit
>   or cygwin, Microsoft Visual Studio 2003 (soon to be moved to
>   2008). The main pain point is the way cygwin/mks handle
>   windows paths. It's not very consistent and make files
>   break very easily.
We'll take the discussion then, then.  Perhaps it is a matter of 
hardening the cygwin make, or to see if there is a Make implementation 
in Java that might be usable?

I am aware that this is a time tested build environment but it still 
appears very brittle.   I'm looking forward to learning more about the 
decisions made to where it is today.
--
  Thorbjørn