Status on OpenJDK Build Infrastructure Project

[Kelly O'Hair]

Status on the OpenJDK Build Infrastructure Project

Just wanted to give a short public status report and let people know what to expect as we approach the
cutover from the old to the new Makefiles in jdk8.

* Windows CYGWIN & MinGW/MSYS - MinGW/MSYS has been sidelined, we managed to get more stable results
   with CYGWIN, although we (we==Erik) did  have to adjust the way the images makefile target was written
   to get there. But you will need a newer CYGWIN, 1.5 is a bad idea, 1.7.16 or newer is a good idea.

* Stability. OpenJDK builds are stable, but it has been a challenge keeping both old and new makefiles working.
   The highly parallel building that is done in the new makefiles can create some issues, but workarounds exist
   and over time we will fine tune the parallel settings based on the actual build system in use.
   ANY changes to any makefiles at this time are risky, please contact us of you need to change makefiles.
 
* Binary comparisons. As best we can, we are comparing old and new builds for some degree of "identical".

* Forest being used. The target of most build-infra changes is now the jdk8/build forest. The build-infra/jdk8
   forest is used for experiments or preliminary testing only.

* Build platform matrix. There had been some talk about changing the default set of build platforms for
   jdk8, but at this time, that work has been put on hold until after the cutover.

* Cutover. When will we make the default build use build-infra? Very soon. Unless some disaster strikes
   expect the cutover to start in early January.

We have some remaining internal work for the Oracle JDK, and we are extremely close to being done.
As soon as we can demonstrate full and complete builds, in comparison to the old builds, we will
proceed to change the default "make" from the top of the forest from the old makefiles to the new build-infra
makefiles. So unless some disaster strikes, expect the cutover to start several weeks before jdk8 M6
(See http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk8/)

The cutover change will show up in the jdk8/build forest first, then hopefully get integrated into the master
jdk8/jdk8 forest within a week. It's unknown how quickly these changes will get pulled down into the
other team forests, it depends on who controls those team areas.

We know that there will be bumps in the road, and we are expecting some degree of "bug tail" on this,
but getting these new Makefiles in place is a very important first step, and a huge change.

As always, let us know if you are having any issues using the new Makefiles. Keep in mind that we will need
to triage the issues given the deadline we have in mind, but we do want to know about all issues.

-kto