Review Request: 8029921: CDS should allow user specify their own classlist

[Ioi Lam]

On 1/15/14, 7:22 AM, Bob Vandette wrote:
> On Jan 15, 2014, at 1:16 AM, David Holmes <David.Holmes at oracle.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Jiangli,
>>
>> On 15/01/2014 3:19 AM, Jiangli Zhou wrote:
>>> Hi David,
>>>
>>> Thanks for the suggestion. How does it work with the existing
>>> -Xshare:dump/auto/on option? Is it possible to combine multiple
>>> sub-options, so it would be something like -Xshare:dump,classlist=XXXX?
>> Right - the classlist is only associated with dumping so some modification to -Xshare:dump would be the way to do it. Exactly how depends on what we think we may want to do in the future. For example do we want to allow control over the name of the archive? If so we might want something like:
>>
>> -Xshare:dump:in=xxx,out=yyy
>>
>> though I'm not sure of the best syntax/grammar to use for these kind of compound options.
>>
>> At this stage we only want to define the class list file name so we don't need to generalize too far, but we also want to choose a syntax that doesn't preclude potential future changes.
>>
>> Comments from runtime folk (Hi Coleen!) would be appreciated. :)
> Do we want the ability to select different archives at startup that have been dumped with different class lists?
>
> If so, then we'd need a way to specify the archive for -Xshare:on, ie -Xshare:on,archive=xxxx
>
> -Xshare:dump,list=xxx,archive=yyy
> -Xshare:on,archive=yyy
>
> Otherwise if we don't want to support multiple archives, this option would be enough.
>
> -Xshare:dump,list=xxx
>
> Can we make the classlist easy to generate but either supporting  the -verbose:class output format or
> by adding a new -verbose:classlist option, please?
>
>
I am not fond of such comma-separated lists in general. They just make 
the VM more complicated with a lot of parsing and syntax checks (which 
come for free with the -XX options). They also make the user's life more 
complicated. I.e., how would you quote space, comma and equal signs, 
which may be part of file names?

- Ioi