Removal of the old build system, partial review

[David Holmes]

On 1/11/2013 3:24 AM, mark.reinhold at oracle.com wrote:
> 2013/10/31 2:41 -0700, kellyohair at gmail.com:
>> With build logic, it is relatively easy to build before and after and
>> verify the exact same resulting bits.

The risk is that we have a number of different build environments and we 
would need to verify them all before committing this change. That in 
itself is a logistical problem as some of the build environments are not 
readily accessible for ad-hoc job submission.

>> So the risk is considerably less than in other areas of software
>> development.  There might be more risk leaving it in, where the wrong
>> build logic gets changed to fix an issue, or the old build logic
>> continues to be used and maintained.
>>
>> Assuming that you may be supporting jdk8 updates for a long time, the
>> long term maintenance cost could be significant. And if you declare
>> that it won't be supported, why keep it.
>
> I agree.  If it's too risky to remove the old build at this point
> in JDK 8 then it will be too risky to remove it in any JDK 8 update
> release, and we'll be stuck dragging this albatross around until
> JDK 9.

I don't see how that follows. The risk now is because we are very very 
late into the release cycle for 8 and so any mistake might impact that 
schedule. If we do this as the first change in 8u and 9 then we have 
tons of time to iron out any glitches.

David

> - Mark
>