The future of OpenJDK6

[Alex Kasko]

On 03/14/2013 01:18 PM, Andrew Haley wrote:
> On 03/13/2013 09:14 PM, Alex Kasko wrote:
>> On 03/13/2013 09:02 PM, Andrew Haley wrote:
>>>
>>> OpenJDK 6 is a legacy project.  People only use it because they want
>>> long-term stability and compatibility.  Therefore, only changes that
>>> fix significant bugs should be made.  This is not a policy change from
>>> that discussed on http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk6/
>>
>> Question about two features, that are not bugfixes, but may be useful in
>> jdk6:
>>
>> 1) unlimited crypto support:
>>    - makefile patch from jdk7 [1]
>>    - maillist thread [2]
>>
>> 2) missed copyMemory method in sun.misc.Unsafe:
>>    - maillist thread [3]
>>    - patch that I'm using in my local jdk6 builds [4]
>>    - original patch that removed proper copyMemory method [5]
>>
>> Are there any chances for them to be included into jdk6?
>
> I would strongly prefer it if neither of these patches went in, but I
> am open to argument.
I'm OK with it, I'm maintaining public windows builds of openjdk6 and 
going to add these patches into my next build anyway (so I've asked 
about them).

>
> Almost nothing would persuade me to accept 2).  This is an internal
> method that no application should use.
Not arguing, just for your information, situation happened to me some 
weeks ago.
My teammate C++ programmer with little java knowledge was working on 
Snappy [1] compatibility with C++ streams. He wanted to build Snappy on 
his Linux box using openjdk6 from packets and was not able to do it - 
got NoSuchMethodError. At the same time it compiles fine with later 
versions of Oracle JDK6. Yes, this Snappy implementation uses 
undocumented API (for optimization purposes) and it has fallback 
implementation and will run on openjdk6. But it cannot be compiled with 
default java6 in Linux without downloading Oracle JDK6 and this caused 
some frustration.
Also sun.misc.Unsafe usage is quite popular for specific optimizations, 
I've even seen it once in java job position requirements (as additional 
point).

>
> Andrew.


[1] https://github.com/dain/snappy

-- 
Regards,
Alex Kasko