"os" - make this a real namespace?

[Rickard Bäckman]

Hi Thomas,

I tried something like that a couple of years ago and still think it is
a good idea.

Link to the discussion and patches:

http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/hotspot-dev/2013-March/008884.html

/R

On 10/19, Thomas Stüfe wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> a small question.
> 
> I sometimes stumble over the fact that "os" is a class, not a namespace.
> And that we include the platform dependent additions into the middle of
> this class.
> 
> This has a number of repercussions, like not being able to include the
> platform dependent files (os_<os>_<cpu>) directly, not being able to
> forward declare functions from the "os" namespace (e.g. os::malloc) etc. I
> also cannot split implementations from "os" functions to different
> implementation files without problems.
> 
> It seems to me all compiler nowadays support namespaces, would it not make
> sense to convert "os" to a real namespace?
> 
> While we are at it, what is the reason for the "<os>" sub classes? e.g.
> os::Bsd, os::Aix etc? It makes integrating patches between platforms
> difficult and, to me, does not seem to serve any clear purpose.
> 
> If the purpose is to be a very low wrapper around OS particularities, it
> makes no sense to have them in the "os" namespace and to make them visible
> to the shared sections of the VM. E.g. there should be no reason to access
> "os::Bsd" functions from outside os/bsd/vm, or to access "os::Posix"
> functions outside implementations specific for Posix platforms.
> 
> Thanks, and Kind Regards, Thomas