Hotspot makefile conversion now in build-infra

[Magnus Ihse Bursie]

On 2013-12-05 14:56, Volker Simonis wrote:
> Hi Magnus,
>
> while I think this is a good step, I still have some questions:
Answers inline.
>
> - is this planned for jdk9 only or will it be backported to jdk8?

For now, we target jdk 9. I'm not sure if there will be a backport to 
any jdk8u release. Technically, I believe a backport of the build system 
from hotspot only from jdk9 to jdk8u will probably be feasible, compared 
to a backport of the rest of the new build system from jdk8 to jdk7u.

> - will you replace the Windows nmake-files by GNU makefiles for the
> Windows build (I would appreciate if yes and I can say that we' (SAP)
> have already done this for the current build)?

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeees! :-) As in the rest of the new build system, we will 
use GNU make exclusively on all platforms, with minimal 
platform-dependent code.

> - against which HotSpot repository will you synchronize? Is it
> hsx/hotspot-main and will it stay the same after jdk9 was branched or
> do you synchronize against jdk8 now (and jdk9 later) and just use the
> hotspot from there? From my point of view it would be desirable to be
> as close as possible to the HotSpot development repository if you want
> to change the HotSpot build system which would probably mean that you
> should synchronize with  hsx/hotspot-main.

Currently, we are based on jdk8. For the moment, we still have a lot of 
catch-up to do, and it's actually beneficial to work against a largely 
non-moving target. When we get closer to having identical build results 
with the old build on all platforms, we need to consider a switch to 
jdk9. The decision which team forest to base our work on then will have 
to wait a bit longer. :) In fact, there is currently an ongoing 
discussion of a New World Order of team forests, so we don't even know 
what forests we will end up with yet.

Working that way will probably also be helpful if we dedice to port the 
new hotspot build to jdk8u.

>   - what do you think would be the right point in time for me to jump
> in with our platform zoo (AIX, HPUX and especially the windows IA64
> cross build) ?

Good question. I'm glad you asked it.





... oh, you wanted an answer as well? :-) I recommend you wait at least 
until we have started some ports for other platforms. For the posix 
platforms, it's probably easier if we have started working on our 
supported posix platforms outside linux (which is mine and Erik's 
primary development platform, not for any other reason that we happen to 
be using it on our workstations), i.e. solaris and macosx. For the 
Windows IA64 port, I recommend you wait until we have a fairly stable 
Windows x86/x86_64 port.

/Magnus