Building with MinGW?

[Lussier, Denis]

I wouldn't try building OpenJDK 7 with anything other than EXACTLY the
very specific versions recommended in the Build README docs provided.
After much trial and error from last year,  we are succesfully and
continually building OpenJDK 6 Win32 binaries available from
http://openscg.org .  Note that this requires very old components like
VS2003 and Windows 2000 to build with and is easily broken by doing
things like applying Service Packs to VS that were not specifically
recommended.

I've had good luck with MINGW on projects like PostgreSQL that
actively support it, but, I wouldn NOT recommend it for OpenJDK.

On the troublesome Freetype issue, just download the latest and
greatest (v2.3.12) from http://freetype.org.  It comes with a VS
project file and is trivial to build yourself.

On 5/5/10, Raffaello Giulietti <raffaello.giulietti at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Damjan,
>
> I have VisualStudio Professional installed and I still have troubles
> building OpenJDK along the explanations given in the README and other blogs.
>
> So, my question with MinGW was not about a zero costs tool but about an
> alternative to try out in place of VisualStudio and its related problems.
>
> Hence, what I did in the last few days was to retry the standard route
> with VisualStudio but with a lot more patience and a lot more time
> planned to do the build. I made some steps forward (e.g., luckily I
> didn't have much troubles with FreeType) but I'm now stuck with real
> compilation errors that cannot be overcome by simply changing the
> configuration, I guess.
>
> Anyway, thank you for having put your experience to a blog.
>
> Raffaello
>
>
>
> On 2010-05-05 14:37, Damjan Jovanovic wrote:
>> 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
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>
>