RFR: 8216262: Remove develop flag DelayCompilationDuringStartup

[David Holmes]

On 8/01/2019 9:13 am, Claes Redestad wrote:
> On 2019-01-07 22:21, David Holmes wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I'm under the impression this process does not apply to develop flags
>>>> (which are not visible an anything but debug builds)?
>>>
>>> We've removed develop flags without obsoletion + expiry many times in
>>> the past[1], and while this goes against the written down expiration
>>> in arguments.cpp, I believe it to be a misguided recommendation for
>>> develop flags.
>>
>> There have been and still can be exceptions depending on the actual 
>> flag but the general guideline is:
>>
>>  * To remove internal options (e.g. diagnostic, experimental, develop 
>> options), use
>>  * a 2-step model adding major release numbers to the obsolete and 
>> expire columns.
>>
>> Compiler folk can identify whether this flag can be expired immediately.
> 
> To me it seems to be the general rule rather than an exception lately, 

Perhaps ... I didn't do a complete census. I see the process being used:

8198635: Remove unused safepoint message functions and ShowSafepointMsgs

and also not used:

6909265: assert(_OnDeck != Self->_MutexEvent,"invariant") with 
-XX:+PrintMallocFree

but in this case using the flag led to an assertion failure so it was a 
reasonable assumption that the flag was not actually being used in 
practice and so could be immediately removed.

> and see no point in
> sticking to that recommendation. I've filed 
> https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8216311
> to drop develop flags from that recommendation.

Noted.

David

> /Claes
> 
>