Progress?

[Kelly O'Hair]

On Jul 15, 2011, at 2:42 PM, Steve Poole wrote:

>> Separate from the actual makefile changes, I had hoped we could create some kind of
>> jdk image comparison tool that could work on all platforms.
>> Something that would accept two jdk image trees (built with different makefiles) and
>> compare the files, layout, and file contents, reporting on any differences.
>> Besides comparing the more obvious things, like filenames and layouts, it would need to
>> rip apart jar and zip files and compare manifests, class files, etc.
>> And I was thinking that for binary files maybe decompile the code or do some kind of
>> text/data section comparisons so we could verify we have the same image.
>> 
>> Of course it's not jdk specific really, and I haven't seen anything out there that is
>> platform independent or capable of doing windows and solaris and linux native
>> binaries.
>> 
>> If we had such a tool, we could feel more confident that makefile changes were safe.
> 
> Amazingly, I wrote such a tool a few years ago (and it was in Java too)  I may still have it around somewhere.
> Let's suppose I find it  or that we write a new one - where would be put the source?   Is there a OpenJDK tools repo?


If you have a tool to contribute that would be great, I would tend to put it in the top repository, in a make/tools directory.
But  perhaps we should give it a spin first?

The jdk repository has a make/tools directory for java tools, but if a tool has value to more than
one repository, it seems like we should place it in a the common share area.

There has been some debate about whether we need a separate common or sharing repository, and not use the
top repository for these things. For now, I'm not so concerned about that, we can discuss that strategy when
it gets time to officially integrate into jdk8. So for the time being I was assuming that the top repository
of build-infra/jdk7 is a fine place.

-kto