How to specify the build output directory?

[Volker Simonis]

Hi Doug,

thanks for the hints.

It seems to most important thing in my setup is to not persist
JAVA_HOME in mx/env but instead use --java-home for every mx
invocation. Otherwise mx won't work at all on all but the platform for
which JAVA_HOME was set in mx/env.

If I understand you right, I'll have to manually clone JAVA_HOME to my
favorite --installed-jdks directory and use that in further
invocations of mx build/run.

I'll give it a try and let you know if it worked.

Thanks,
Volker


On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 6:17 PM, Doug Simon <doug.simon at oracle.com> wrote:
> I think this should help:
>
> $ mx buildvars
> HotSpot build variables that can be set by the -D option to "mx build":
>
> ALT_BOOTDIR
>     The location of the bootstrap JDK installation (default: /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_45.jdk/Contents/Home)
> ALT_OUTPUTDIR
>     Build directory
> HOTSPOT_BUILD_JOBS
>     Number of CPUs used by make (default: 4)
> INSTALL
>     Install the built VM into the JDK? (default: y)
> ZIP_DEBUGINFO_FILES
>     Install zipped debug symbols file? (default: 0)
>
> Note that these variables can be given persistent values in the file /Users/dsimon/linz/basic-graal/mx/env (see 'mx about').
>
> You then use this in combination with the --installed-jdks option. For example:
>
> $ mx --installed-jdks /tmp/alt-jdks build -DALT_OUTPUTDIR=/tmp/alt-jdks/build
>
> Christian Thalinger has some experience using --installed-jdks for (re)using a current JDK workspace so he can provide further help if the 'mx help' info for the --installed-jdks option is not clear enough.
>
> -Doug
>
> On Oct 28, 2013, at 5:54 PM, Volker Simonis <volker.simonis at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I've just started to play around with Graal but I couldn't find a way
>> to specify a build output directory to the mx  tool.
>>
>> While I personally don't like to clobber my source directory with
>> unknown build artifacts (and I think it is good practice not to do
>> so), not having the possibility to specify an arbitrary output
>> directory also implies practical problems. The most important is that
>> it seems to me that it is not possible to build Graal for two
>> platforms from the same repository because the output will be mixed
>> (and the settings in mx/env will be shared).
>>
>> For me, building the same repository on different platforms seems an
>> essential feature. Otherwise I'll always have to mess with
>> transplanting changesets back and forth to ensure the changes for one
>> platform don't break another one.
>>
>> So to cut a long story short - is there a possibility with the current
>> Graal build tools to redirect all the build output to a configurable
>> directory? And if not, are there any plans to provide such a feature?
>> Or am I missing something here?
>>
>> Thank you and best regards,
>> Volker
>