Visual Studio 2010

[Kelly O'Hair]

On May 19, 2010, at 12:56 AM, Raffaello Giulietti wrote:

> Since some days, the "OpenJDK Build README" mentions Visual Studio C++
> 2010 as the reference compiler.

That is the current plan, to convert to VS2010. Phil Race has pushed  
some recent changes to allow for
VS2010 builds in the jdk7/build forest... or did it make it to jdk7/ 
jdk7 yet? (can't tell, the hg server is down).
But changes to allow for VS2010 builds are in place, more tweeks to  
come, and both VS2003 and VS2010
should work now (no time will be spent on VS2005 or VS2008,  they may  
work or they may not, but we haven't
tossed that makefile logic..... yet...).

>
> As mentioned by Kelly
> (http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/build-dev/2010-May/ 
> 002944.html),
> the step seems to be a stable one, at least for some years, I guess.
>
> Kelly, to your knowledge, has the transition to VS2010 been adopted  
> even
> by the formal JDK7 Release Engineering team?

Not yet, the new Release Engineering hardware and OS install is in  
progress, being done in stages to verify
builds with XP+VS2003 work ok, then XP+VS2010.
Once Release Engineering can build on Windows XP with VS2010 (probably  
using MKS for now because
it's faster than CYGWIN), then we can do more formal testing of those  
bits.

Then we have the logistics of getting VS2010 to our developers and  
developer build systems, until we
have the developer build systems using VS2010, we have a risk of  
VS2003<->VS2010 related build failures.
I'll be working with Erik to nail down the specific things needed on  
XP, and creating a minimal OS image
for our build systems, and will try and update the README-builds.html  
file as I get those specifics.

>
> Can we, outside of Oracle, give it a try or should we better wait some
> weeks to see the build process stabilize before risking our mental
> health ;-) ?

I've CC'd Phil who did the VS2010 changes recently, perhaps he will  
show us his scars ;^)

In my opinion, I think we are very close, and would welcome any kind  
of VS2010 police efforts by
anyone, as I'm sure Phil Race will.  If there are build issues with  
VS2010, we will try and address those
very quickly.

Granted, as stated by many people, sometimes it's not just VS2010  
issues, but different CYGWIN issues, PATH
setup issues, VS2010 Professional vs. Express, shell and GNU make  
versions.
Windows is not only the most difficult system to setup, it's also  
somewhat impossible to duplicate the environment
or verify all variations or configurations behave the same way.

Hope this helps to explain things...

-kto

>