Removal of the old build system, partial review

[Chris Hegarty]

What are we gaining by removing this in jdk8? Does it make sense to do 
it as one of the first pushes to 9?

-Chris.

On 10/31/2013 02:17 PM, Magnus Ihse Bursie wrote:
> On 2013-10-31 13:28, Alan Bateman wrote:
>> On 31/10/2013 07:36, Magnus Ihse Bursie wrote:
>>>
>>> I'm not sure there is a definite plan for this. Personally, I'd
>>> prefer to have this fixed in JDK8, but I'm also aware that the timing
>>> is not ideal. Unfortunately, some groups were still using the old
>>> build system until very recently, so we have been unable to do this
>>> before.
>> The timing with respect to the jdk8 schedule is indeed awkward. So if
>> you doesn't go ahead then would it make sense to at least disable it
>> so as to flush out any remaining slackers? Also is there really risk
>> to your proposed step 1 that simple deletes the old make files that
>> are no longer used?
>
> The risk to deleting the old make files that are not used, is that I
> have not managed to track all uses. For instance, there are tests in
> jdk/test/closed that reference files in jdk/make as part of their
> testing. (I don't think that's the way it should work, but hey, that's
> the way it is.)
>
> Of course we could "disable" the old build slighly more than now, by not
> accepting the NEWBUILD argument anymore. This will make it harder (but
> not impossible) to build using the old build system.
>
> Still, to a not initiated developer, the old make system will still seem
> present and functional. Someone is bound to try to build with it.
> Someone is bound to try to update code when making corresponding changes
> in the new build system. Etc.
>
> So there are several steps that can be taken:
> 1) just "disable" to normal way of being able to build using the old
> build system
> 2) just remove parts of the old build that is deemed safe to remove
> 3) fully remove all unused parts of the old build, and move the new
> build into its place
>
> We can of course decide that we should take step 1, or maybe even 2, but
> not 3. But I'm not sure what the benefits are. Between today and 1,
> there's just those stubbornly enought to specify NEWBUILD=false. We have
> no such users internally at Oracle, and I doubt anyone outside Oracle
> does this. For 2, we still have the risk of inadvertently deleting
> files, but we will end up with a half-baked mess of the old build system
> being neither completely there nor completely gone.
>
> So my suggestion is that we either stay on 0, or go all the way to 3.
>
> /Magnus