Why MACOSX_UNIVERSAL == true by default?

[Scott Kovatch]

On Oct 12, 2012, at 1:56 PM, Vladimir Ivanov <vladimir.x.ivanov at oracle.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Does anybody know/remember why MACOSX_UNIVERSAL=true by default?
> 
> I'm asking, because JDK layout on MacOS X differs from other platforms and to make export_*_jdk build targets work correctly, you need to specify ALT_MACOSX_UNIVERSAL=false.
> 
> I'd like to fix that (change default value to false), but I have no idea why it was set to true in the first place.

When the Mac port of JDK 7 was in its own project it was being built universal (i.e., both 32- and 64-bit executables in the same binary). As a result, there's never been a reason to separate out each binary by architecture as is done on other platforms.

When that project was merged over to the main JDK 7 project, though, we stopped building the 32-bit version. I suspect, however, that that flag also tells the build to not create the per-architecture directories because so much code in the native support on OS X assumes that libjvm.dylib won't be in a subfolder.

-- Scott K.

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Scott Kovatch
scott.kovatch at oracle.com
Santa Clara/Pleasanton, CA