Preliminary request for review: 7025066 Build system changes to support SE Embedded integration

[David Holmes]

Dr Andrew John Hughes said the following on 03/11/11 11:02:
> On 17:35 Thu 10 Mar     , David Holmes wrote:
>> Sorry, this was just a preliminary RFR so I didn't set up the webrev 
>> versioning.
>>
> 
> My issue was more a personal distaste for webrevs than anything you did
> wrong.  I just find it much easier if everything is in the e-mail and
> can be commented on inline rather than on some website that has to be
> loaded up in a separate window and can change or even disappear.  It's
> especially true for big patches like this, where you really need to
> break the patch down in the mail.

We'll have to agree to disagree there. The webrev should be un-changing 
- that was my fault. webrev is far superior to patches in emails. 
Patches in emails only work when they are very small and you don't have 
to be able to determine the context of the patch to understand it.

>> I'm looking into a new structure where the JAVASE_EMBEDDED stuff is 
>> factored out into Defs-embedded.gmk and Release-embedded.gmk. This will 
>> relegate the reduced-jre targets to being relevant to embedded only and 
>> anyone not interested just doesn't look in those files.
>>
> 
> My fear is not so much Makefile clutter as that untested options can bit rot.
> People make modifications in one area and these unused options are missed.
> That's actually more likely if you squirrel it away in a separate file.

Well the separate file is our concern as we will be using it - no bit 
rot there. The concern we have (Embedded group) when we have these 
additions to add cross-compilation etc is that the other teams are not 
aware of them and so, for example, they may add a new build tool that 
has to be compiled at build time and they use $(CC) not realizing they 
should use $(HOST_CC). But again we will hit that pretty quickly and can 
then make a correction. And hopefully, over time as people are more 
aware of cross-compilation, for example, they will know these things to 
watch out for.

By "hiding" things like the reduced-jre targets in the 
Release-embedded.gmk we avoid people trying to use them out of context. 
I'd like to do the same with BUILD_CLIENT_ONLY but it's somewhat more 
intrusive, without making a lot of changes to do existence tests prior 
to copying etc.

Cheers,
David