RFR: 8016780: (xs) README-builds.html misses crucial requirement on bootstrap JDK

[Erik Joelsson]

On 2013-06-19 03:10, Stuart Marks wrote:
> -- 
>
> I have half a mind to look at the Configure changes myself in my spare 
> time (ha!), but I have no spare time, and I don't have the expertise 
> in this area anyway. So anyone is welcome to pick this up. In 
> principle it should be fairly simple, and I think it's fairly 
> important. This isn't the first time someone's been bitten by having 
> the wrong boot JDK version, and it won't be the last.
>
Currently, configure checks that the found boot jdk is 7 or 8. Do we 
really want to actively prevent using 8 all together? I could agree to 
printing a big warning in the summary at the end of configure to 
discourage it, but I do believe it necessary to have the ability to 
build with 8 for tracking down certain bugs.
> Regarding the rearrangement of corba/jaxp/jaxws to use the fresh JDK 
> instead of the boot JDK. At least we know they build, because the boot 
> cycle build builds them successfully. (At least, I think it does.) 
> Now, I don't think the artifacts produced from a boot cycle build are 
> actually tested or are delivered anywhere in a bundle. So, while it 
> seems quite unlikely, some bugs could have been introduced by building 
> with a newer JDK version.
>
> Now ... circular dependencies ... urk ... I *knew* there was something 
> that would make this complicated. Well, maybe these will need to be 
> refactored away somehow. Or maybe some kind of GenStubs technique can 
> be used to deal with the circularity.
>
> You introduced yet another point as well, which is the relationship 
> between the repository organization and the build structure. As I 
> understand things, each repository has its own build support and 
> builds in a separate step from the others. In principle I think that 
> the repository structure ought to be orthogonal to the build 
> structure. At least, if we move to a more modular build structure, 
> that shouldn't imply that we need to have each module in its own 
> repository. In fact I'd like to see fewer repositories. To me, the 
> only compelling reason to have a separate repo is if the source code 
> in it is a snapshot of an upstream source base -- as seems to be the 
> case for jaxws. Having all the stuff in fewer repos makes it easier to 
> bisect to find failures, and it reduces the need for careful 
> management of coordinated, cross-repo changes.
My preferred solution would be to fold in the repos that aren't upstream 
projects into jdk and just have them compile with the rest there. I much 
like the idea of reducing the number of repos. If that isn't possible, 
we can just add those source directories to the main javac invocation in 
jdk too.

/Erik