OpenJDK vs Sun JDK Versions

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi Keith,

On Mon, 2009-05-11 at 18:35 -0700, Keith Kowalczykowski wrote:
>     Just to veryify that I am not completely crazy with what I'm saying, I
> would appreciate if someone can verify what I'm seeing. Looking at the
> public source snapshot of Sun JDK 6u12 (
> http://download.java.net/jdk6/6u12/promoted/b04/index.html) we see that
> java.awt.Component has the new lock object outlined in #6701268 (the
> variable is named "objectLock" instead of "changeSupportLock"). Furthermore,
> the readObject method property re-initializes objectLock, so the issue
> outlined in the bug never occurred in a public release. However, looking at
> OpenJDK 1.6.0-b11 ( http://download.java.net/openjdk/jdk6/promoted/b11/),
> the "changeSupportLock" variable exists, but it is not properly restored in
> readObject. This means that OpenJDK build 11 was branched off of some
> internal/intermediate codebase not necessarially associated with any vetted
> java version.

You are not crazy, and you conclusion is right. Especially the AWT code
has been somewhat troublesome, with needing a lot of fixes. Most of them
are in IcedTea already and are being pushed to openjdk6 for inclusion to
keep the needed fixes to a minimum. The distros work together through
IcedTea to do precisely what you want, making sure bugs are fixed and
push them upstream if they are missing.

Which is what happened in this case also (almost a year ago):
http://icedtea.classpath.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=159
http://icedtea.classpath.org/hg/icedtea?cmd=changeset;node=c9c356cd3adf
Which was then eventually incorporated into into some openjdk6 drop
after b11.

>     By no means am I trying to jerk anyone's chain over this, and I
> appreciate all of the work everyone has done to get OpenJDK off the ground.
> However, if OpenJDK is going to be the primary JVM on opensource production
> systems (and it seems like both sun and the community at large is pushing
> for this), then there need to be some higher standards for matching the same
> stability and bug-freeness as the Sun JDK itself. I suggest we begin a
> dialog about this in order to figure out a way to fix these issues, and
> provide a higher gaurantee about the stability of OpenJDK. I would be happy
> to help-out/contribute as necessary.

You are welcome. Obviously Sun doesn't have the resources to do all this
alone. A lot of testing and bugs now come through the various GNU/Linux
distros. If you find a bug please do report it to the distro you got
your got your packages from. They will forward appropriately and/or
immediately create a fix and push it upstream.

You do seem to be using a rather old release, please try to get at least
IcedTea 1.4 (o6 b14). 1.5 (o6 b16) is currently being prepared as a
follow up release.

Thanks,

Mark