My build is not working..? Ask the Doctor!

[Magnus Ihse Bursie]

 With JDK-8283901[1], a new support mechanism has been added to the build system -- "make doctor". Those of you who have used the "brew doctor" of macOS Homebrew might guess what this is about. If you are getting unexpected build failures (i.e., not a syntax error on the file you just edited...), the Make Doctor can help diagnose common issues.

The basic principle of the build system is still that configure should verify that your system is sane and has all prerequisites for building, and once configure passes with success, all subsequent calls to make should succeed.

However, this is not always the case. There are some "environmental" problems that can creep up that configure cannot test, since it is too expensive to test, or since it is not possible to determine with absolute certainty that something is bad.

The Make Doctor can do more expensive checks, validate the build environment, and suggest "suspect" things that you might want to check up. It will also help to collect warnings from elsewhere that might be easy to miss otherwise, and suggest ways to continue resolving the error, if the actions suggested by the Doctor are not enough.

So, the next time you're getting a strange build error -- start by asking The Doctor[2]!

/Magnus

[1] https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8283901
[2]

                    Exterminate all bugs!
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