RFR: JDK-8210962 Deprecate jdk-variant

[Magnus Ihse Bursie]

On 2018-09-20 18:59, Aleksey Shipilev wrote:
> On 09/20/2018 06:48 PM, Magnus Ihse Bursie wrote:
>> A long time ago, we supported different "variants" of the JDK build, like "normal" and "embedded".
>> The --with-jdk-variant and associated machinery has been kept in place, even though it's not doing
>> anyting. Time to remove it.
>>
>> I chose to keep the "-normal-" in the build output name so as not to break any scripts. But I'm
>> willing to change this if someone has a clear opinion otherwise.
> This breakage would happen at some point anyway, unless we accept that "-normal-" would linger
> forever. It is probably for the best to break it when we purge the configure option.
I'm actually not very fond of the build output name format, and have 
considered changing it drastically for some time. Maybe this should be 
the time.

Currently the default format looks like this: 
"linux-x86_64-normal-server-release", that is 
<OS>-<CPU>-<JDK_VARIANT>-<JVM_VARIANT>-<DEBUG_LEVEL>. The selection of 
these configuration parameters feels a bit arbitrary. Some examples of 
other parameters we could have included, but don't, are:  abi-profile, 
jvm-features, version-string, static-build, headless-only.

The relevance of including any of these parameters in the build output 
name depends on some thought-up scenario were the alternative 
configurations that reasonably could be built at the same time. For 
instance, in a cross-compilation scenario, os and cpu makes sense to 
include, but perhaps not otherwise. The jvm-variant is more or less 
reduced to server or zero at this time, and it's unclear if this needs 
to be part of the build output directory name.

When building with the Oracle jib tool, we get profiles named like 
"linux-x64" or "linux-x64-debug". To me, this is not such a mouthful as 
the default configure name.

Or perhaps we should have names that are more dynamic? Just like the 
debug-level is either empty (for release) or "-debug" in the jib name, 
maybe we should skip elements if they have a default value? So 
linux-x86_64-zero would mean the JVM variant zero, but linux-x86_64 mean 
the JVM variant server (default)? And 
linux-x86_64-zero-static_build-headless_only-fastdebug would be just that...

/Magnus
>
>> Bug: https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8210962
>> WebRev: http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~ihse/JDK-8210962-deprecate-jdk-variant/webrev.01
> Ah, my heart skipped a bit. It is important to mention this is _not_ jvm-variant :)
>
> $ sh ./configure --help | grep variant
>    --with-jdk-variant      JDK variant to build (normal) [normal]       <--- removing this guy
>    --with-jvm-variants     JVM variants (separated by commas) to build
>
> configure: The available JVM variants are: "server client minimal core zero custom"
>
> Thanks,
> -Aleksey
>