What is the xawt sizer wrapper, really?

[Magnus Ihse Bursie]

We've had series of recurring issues with the xawt sizer wrapper (as 
defined in jdk/make/sun/xawt/Makefile) -- we've called it the 
X11Wrapper, I'm not sure if it has any other, more proper name.

First of all, I must ask: what is the purpose of this? Does anybody here 
know, and can explain?

The logic of this makefile is quite convoluted, with multi-step 
generation and execution. Is this really neccessary?

The real problem, from our point of view, is not the complex 
generate/run/generate scheme -- make handles that for us. The problem is 
the interaction between the build and target platform, and the reason 
for having both 32 and 64-bit versions.

Appearantly, we build both a 32 and a 64 bit version on some platforms, 
and then try to execute both. This works with varying degree of success 
depending on what build OS you're using and how it is configured. :-)

Do we really need to do this? And why?

Also, for 64-bit solaris we compare the generated file with a checked-in 
version, and if it differs, the build fail! So in reality, on this 
platform, we're not really doing real build work, but rather verifying 
that the build system looks like expected. But this is something that 
should be done in configure, rather as part of the build. If this is the 
real reason for this wrapper, could we perhaps generate these 
sizes-files for all platforms and check them in, and just verify them as 
part of configure?

/Magnus
(who have been working hard with the X11Wrapper for quite some time and 
still is totally confused about it's purpose and workings)