OpenJDK vs Sun JDK Versions

[Andrew Haley]

Keith Kowalczykowski wrote:

> 2. I am still kind of confused about how IcedTea fits into the picture. My
> basic understanding is that it provides a build system for all of the
> distros, as well as some more secondary components, such as webstart. But I
> don't understand how it fits into the picture with respect to patching
> OpenJDK 6.

We patch JDK6 for a number of reasons:

*  Patches that are in OpenJDK7 but not yet the official OpenJDK6
*  Linux-specific changes such as using system libraries and resources
*  Build system extensions to allow building with other tools e.g. gcj
*  Ports to non-86 architectures that have not yet been merged into OpenJDK6
*  Bug fixes not yet accepted into OpenJDK6

http://icedtea.classpath.org/wiki/IcedTea_JDK6_Patches

> 4. As far as ensuring that Sun JDK 6 fixes make it into OpenJDK 6, I presume
> you can not do a diff/patch using Sun JDK source bundles because 1)
> licensing issues and 2) enough has changed between the Sun JDK and the funky
> history of OpenJDK 6.

Indeed, because OpenJDK 6 is based on JDK 7.

Andrew.