JDK8 Preliminary Repository Layout

[Alan Bateman]

David Holmes wrote:
>
> I'm not quite sure what you mean by this but working on different 
> repos we often do just use the "binaries" for other parts. For hotspot 
> for example my build process was the create the new libjvm.so file and 
> simply drop into a JDK. I never needed to build the JDK to do that. I 
> imagine the JDK folks do something similar and just drop an updated 
> rt.jar into an existing JDK, or an updated libjava.so etc. Sometimes 
> when I'm working on JDK changes I'll just use Xbootclasspath to test 
> things out with an existing JDK.
On the JDK side of the house then I think most people just build the 
"jdk" repository. This means they are doing a partial build with hotspot 
and the other components (jax* etc.) being imported by the build from 
the "import JDK", usually the last promoted build. So this is making use 
of pre-built binaries to avoid needing to build the world. Another thing 
is that I think most people just build the jdk "all" target and so don't 
build the complete image (no rt.jar etc.). Coupled with incremental 
building means you can work in a specific area with really good  
re-build times.

Steve wondered about "cross-repo" changes. There are some but probably 
only a small percentage of the changes requiring coordinated changes. 
The langtools area will periodically need to push changes to both 
langtools and the jdk repositories. Usually not a major issue becuase 
the changes go into the same forest. The really one is the 
serviceability area where they are changes to both the hotspot and the 
jdk repositories taking different routes into the master (although that 
is probably more of a process issue than a repository layout issue).

-Alan