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On 11/03/11 01:14, David Holmes wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:4D797790.9010908@oracle.com" type="cite">Dr
Andrew John Hughes said the following on 03/11/11 10:57:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">On 06:40 Fri 11 Mar , David Holmes
wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Stepping up a level, an initial download
of openjdk need not involve
<br>
using mercurial at all. You can simply download a stable
snapshot as a
<br>
tar file; </blockquote>
<br>
This makes much more sense as a starting point for new users
over having
<br>
to handle Mercurial and checkouts. It works fine if you just
want to _use_
<br>
the latest and greatest, not hack on it.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Even if you want to hack you can still do your initial download
this way. The hg commands only come into play when you want to
update things later.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
That's the main point for me - I want to get easy updates -
checking out code from a repo is much nicer than having to download
a tar and apply your changes. Mercurials update and merge
capabilities are great. <br>
<br>
BTW - its important that whatever process is documented is one
that's used by developers. So though it may be tempting to have
complete snapshots of a build tree available - unless someone
actively proves they work, its best to have a singular process that
<b>everyone</b> uses everyday. <br>
<br>
Checking out using hg is simple - the only wart is the forest
extension and that's only because its unclear what the community
view is on using it. <br>
<blockquote cite="mid:4D797790.9010908@oracle.com" type="cite">
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">or download an install script that will
do whatever is
<br>
necessary behind the scenes to get a complete openjdk.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
I don't know how that would work. I guess IcedTea comes close
to this idea
<br>
in that it detects the needed settings for the build, rather
than them all
<br>
having to be passed as make variables.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
I was thinking of a simple installer as used by various bits of
software. For example for Linux you might download a script that
simply contains the initial set of hg commands needed to get the
forest. On windows it might automate downloading a tarball and
extracting it.
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">Personally I'd
<br>
like to see that include the basic build tools as well - in
which case I
<br>
don't care about "special extensions" as I just get a working
toolkit. </blockquote>
<br>
What do you mean by this? Can you give an example?
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
I know this is not what most people want and not how most OS
handle software packaging these days, but I think it would be
useful to be able to grab a tools bundles for a given OS that
includes the various tools and extras you need eg mercurial, ant,
gcc, freetype - all the things the build docs tell you that you
have to go and get to build openjdk. Just yesterday I had to go
and grab freetype and get it installed on a machine; today I've
had to install gawk and libasound2-dev. I find this a PITA.
<br>
<br>
I don't expect to see this happen, my point was that if you did
have easy access to pre-packaged tools, then it wouldn't matter if
openjdk required customized variants of those tools.
<br>
<br>
David
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
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