Building with MinGW?

[Damjan Jovanovic]

Hi Raffaello

Hope this isn't too late, but if you're merely looking for a free as
opposed to an open source compiler to build OpenJDK, then Visual
Studio Express edition can be used too:

http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/build-dev/2009-December/002641.html

I've documented some other Windows build gotchas in that email too.

Good luck
Damjan

On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 5:42 PM, Raffaello Giulietti
<raffaello.giulietti at gmail.com> wrote:
> Let me put things in perspective.
>
> I'm not interested in building OpenJDK7 per se. I would use the binary
> snapshots, were it not for the fact that, for my purposes, I need the
> latest extensions provided by the MLVM project. Unfortunately, there is
> no binary snapshot for that, so I need to download the Mercurial
> repository, apply the MLVM specific patches and build it.
>
> Now, I invested two frustrating days in trying to build the "pure"
> OpenJDK7, i.e., without the MLVM extensions. I did it according to the
> details described in the quite complete "OpenJDK Build README" page. So
> I used the expected licensed VisualStudio compiler. The problems I
> encountered can be generally grouped in the "path not found" category,
> be it because of spaces in the path, because of \ versus /, etc. As a
> consequence, I didn't even try a build with the MLVM extensions.
>
> To be clear, I'm not complaining about the README or the like. I'm only
> reporting my experience with such a complex system and its build.
>
> So, the real reason behind my request for a MinGW based build is that it
> would be a second chance to try a build of the MLVM. But since nobody
> seems to have first-hand experience with OpenJDK7/MinGW, I'll gather my
> energies and my patience and retry with VisualStudio.
>
> RG
>
>
>
> On 2010-04-21 18:40, Kelly O'Hair wrote:
>>
>> On Apr 21, 2010, at 5:58 AM, Raffaello Giulietti wrote:
>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I'm wondering if anybody has already tried to build OpenJDK7 on Windows
>>> using the MinGW suite.
>>
>> If they have, I never heard from them.
>>
>>>
>>> * Is there anything known to be a hard to circumvent show stopper?
>>
>> To me the basic problem is that with "Windows" it is hard to separate
>> the code
>> dependencies on the OS, some Windows SDK, something specific to Visual
>> Studio,
>> etc. I'm not saying it would be impossible, but it is not a simple
>> change and
>> parts of the jdk might be very difficult to disconnect from Visual Studio
>> dependencies. The code has assumed Visual Studio for a long long time.
>>
>> If someone did it, and we were able to build either way, and the changes
>> weren't
>> too outrageous, I'm sure we consider accepting that contribution.
>> But I just don't think it will be that simple.
>>
>>> * Is it known why Visual C++ is still the reference build system on
>>> Windows?
>>
>> It was probably chosen as the defacto standard on Windows a long time
>> ago and
>> there was never any value in changing that.
>> The performance was probably a key issue, and whether or not you could
>> convert
>> to a different compiler set, before the official builds would ever
>> change you
>> would need some very detailed performance measurements to verify no loss of
>> performance. That's not an easy job, or simple either.
>>
>> ---
>>
>> Any change to the compilers used to create the binary JDKs we distribute
>> is always
>> a change made very carefully. It might provide significant benefits, but
>> the
>> hidden dangers are often difficult to find and diagnose.
>> I know this binary distribution model is of less interest to some who
>> just want
>> to build the openjdk source for a particular platform, but it certainly
>> is a
>> critical issue for us. Compiler changes are carefully tracked.
>>
>> -kto
>>
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>> Raffaello
>>
>
>