RFR (L, tedious again, sorry) 8189610: Reconcile jvm.h and all jvm_md.h between java.base and hotspot

[David Holmes]

On 28/10/2017 3:47 AM, mandy chung wrote:
> On 10/27/17 7:08 AM, coleen.phillimore at oracle.com wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 10/27/17 9:37 AM, David Holmes wrote:
>>>
>>> The one file that is needed is a hotspot file - jvm.h defines the 
>>> interface that hotspot exports via jvm.cpp.
>>>
>>> If you leave jvm.h in hotspot/prims then a very large chunk of your 
>>> boilerplate changes are not needed. The JDK code doesn't care what 
>>> the name of the directory is - whatever it is just gets added as a -I 
>>> directive (the JDK code will include "jvm.h" not "prims/jvm.h" the 
>>> way hotspot sources do.
>>>
>>> This isn't something we want to change back or move again later. 
>>> Whatever we do now we live with.
>>
>> I think it belongs with jni.h and I think the core libraries group 
>> would agree.   It seems more natural there than buried in the hotspot 
>> prims directory.  I guess this is on hold while we have this debate.   
>> Sigh.
>>
>> Actually with -I directives, changing to jvm.h from prims/jvm.h would 
>> still work.   Maybe we should change the name to jvm.hpp since it's 
>> jvm.cpp though?   Or maybe just have two divergent copies and close 
>> this as WNF. 
> 
> I also think hotspot/prims is not a good location. 
> src/java.base/share/include is a well-defined location for native header 
> files.  Maybe internal header files could be placed in include/internal 
> but this is a separate issue .  I should create an issue for jvm.h and 
> jmm.h (I looked at the files under the include directory and jvm.h and 
> jmm.h are the only two internal header files in the include directory).

Keeping it in prims avoids the need to touch many hotspot files, and 
with no changes needed on the JDK side because we use a -I directive to 
set the include path anyway. This is the exported VM interface so it 
makes sense to me for it to be located in the VM sources.

But I'm not going to oppose this either way so it's up to Coleen.

> I do think removing the duplicated copy of jvm.h is a good change. This 
> is finally possible with the consolidated repository and we no longer 
> need to update two copies of jvm.h for any change to the JVM 

Unfortunately we did not do this though - hence the divergence between 
the two. The use of int versus long for jint is causing a real problem.

Coleen also hit the other issue on the head. The JNI and JVM interfaces 
are C interfaces, not C++. The JDK code that uses them is compiled as C 
- so all good. But the JVM code that implements them is compiled as C++, 
and that is why we are getting issues with differing linkage directives.

David
-----

> interface.   This change will work with -I directive setting to the new 
> location, if changed later.
> 
> What do you think?
> 
> Mandy