Bit of a status update

[Kelly O'Hair]

On Aug 23, 2012, at 9:58 PM, Salter, Thomas A wrote:

> Are there any plans to continue to support MKS?

No plans. Sorry.

> 
> After struggling a while with CYGWIN and JDK7, I decided MKS wasn't too expensive after all.  MKS works fine for me and I would prefer to keep using it.

Not all versions of MKS work on all Windows releases for jdk building, so be careful.
MKS 9.4 has some kind of pipe hang issue that can cause some Makefiles to lock up, we have used 9.0p4 successfully.
The 9.4 hang may have only happened on Windows XP or Windows 2003 X64, not sure which.
The issue was filed with MKS on 9.4p1 but I have not gotten ANY response from them that it was fixed.
CFS# 32146 --- intermittent hangs

-kto

> 
> 
> -----------------------
> 
> Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2012 15:55:46 +0200
> From: "Kelly O'Hair" <kelly.ohair at oracle.com>
> Subject: Bit of a status update
> To: build-infra-dev at openjdk.java.net
> Message-ID: <5685DB30-0928-4D6F-9855-8B51A22D1BF7 at oracle.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> 
> 
> The Build-Infra project has been progressing, so I just wanted to give a short public status report and let people
> know what we are working on.
> 
> * MinGW/MSYS - Mostly Tim Bell working on this. Plan is to integrate changes to JDK8 that allow for the use
>    of MinGW/MSYS to build on Windows XP and Windows 2003 X64 (Windows 7 should work too).
>    CYGWIN is so problematic on Windows 2003 X64 and Windows 7 X64 that we want this MinGW/MSYS option.
>    Many thanks to Volker Simonis for his original work on this.
>    Initially Tim will integrate the changes to allow the old (default) Makefiles to build with MinGW/MSYS, then
>    the plan was to get it to work with the new build-infra Makefiles.
> 
> * CYGWIN issues with 'make images'. We are experiencing some hangs with GNU make when the new build-infra
>    makefiles perform the 'make images' target. We are actively tracking this in parallel to Tim's work above, so depending
>    on what we find out, we might terminate this investigation if MinGW/MSYS pans out.
>    It is becoming clear that CYGWIN could be the wrong choice in the long run if we can't get it stable and also faster.
>    (Keep in mind that MKS will NOT work with build-infra, so it's CYGWIN or MinGW/MSYS at this point).
> 
> * Stability. We want these new Makefiles to be rock solid, so we are hitting it hard to make sure we know the weak
>    spots and fix them. Fast builds are great, but they also need to be rock solid, stable, and predictable.
> 
> * Binary comparisons. We are doing some significant work to try and get a better handle on the comparison process
>    where we will make sure that the new Makefiles create the same j2sdk-image as the old Makefiles.
>    Where we can we want "identical" bits, which is sometimes a bit tricky to define on some files.
>    The general feeling is that being able to compare built images is an immediate help and also a long term benefit
>    we would like to have for the long run.
> 
> * Another jdk8/build sync up. Coming soon, we wanted to do some build-infra stabilization first before we refresh the
>    build-infra Makefiles in the public jdk8 areas.
> 
> * When will we make the default build use build-infra? Hard to tell, but until we get the comparisons in good shape
>    for all platforms, we can't make the switch. We also have some work to get the rest of the Oracle JDK to work with
>    these new build-infra Makefiles. But things are progressing and it's looking better and better.
> 
> Please let us know if you are still having issues using the new Makefiles.
> 
> -kto
> 
> P.S. There has been some talk of upgrading the official Build systems or MBE
>   http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk8/build/raw-file/tip/README-builds.html#MBE
> Not Solaris, but Linux/gcc and Windows.
> So we are keeping this in mind but it's not part of the build-infra project right now.
> Tentatively we were thinking Windows 7 X64 and Ubuntu 12.04 X64, but Windows 7 X64 and
> CYGWIN seems to be worse than Windows 2003 X64 and CYGWIN. :^(
> If you have any feedback on this, please let us know.
> 
>