Project Proposal: Build Infrastructure Changes

[Kelly O'Hair]

On May 3, 2011, at 10:16 AM, Keith McGuigan wrote:

> 
> On May 3, 2011, at 12:05 PM, Kelly O'Hair wrote:
> 
>> I was going to say that building hotspot does NOT require a Boot JDK to build, but I would be wrong, it does,
>> but I agree, it probably should not. As I recall, there is some XML processing, the stupid gamma launcher Queens use,
> 
> Whoops... little typo here.  Shouldn't say "stupid gamma launcher", it should be, "incredibly-useful-for-debugging-the-JVM gamma launcher".  Easy mistake to make, though:  the keys are, like, right next to each other.  :)

No doubt it's been useful, but seriously, you just built a hotspot for jdk7, with a completely different
C++ compiler, and a different C++ runtime dependency, and you plop it down into a jdk6 image (that
was built with a different C++ compiler, and maybe using a different C++ runtime) and you guys'
expect it to work reliably? It doesn't, and likely won't run in a cross compile environment at all.
At a minimum, you should be plopping it into a jdk7 image, a jdk7 image built for the target arch you
are building and can run, and when it comes down to it, isn't this actually a "test" of your build?

The number of issues with that gamma/Queens makefile logic is too high, and it's not something we ship
anyway. In my opinion, we should be restricting ourselves to building what we ship as part of the product,
or what we need to make that build happen.
So in my opinion, the whole thing needs to be moved to the hotspot/test area.

In addition, the gamma launcher code is riddled with troublesome/buggy code that gets little attention, mostly
because it isn't shipped as part of the product. If you guys want this code as part of the build, it needs
some attention. If it is just a test case, then isolate it and make it one.

We need to do a better job of separating out the building logic from the testing logic.

Just my 2 cents... ;^)

-kto

> 
> --
> - Keith
>