Need reviewer - jdk7u-osx Mac sanity check fixes

[Mike Swingler]

On Dec 20, 2011, at 6:46 AM, David Schlosnagle wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 2:09 AM, Henri Gomez <henri.gomez at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The JDK should be buildable under both llvm-gcc (which it currently uses) and clang, which is the future, since llvm-gcc is now in maintenance mode.
> >
> > If you are restricting your builders to Mac OS X 10.7 now, you can actually cut over to using clang soon, since it has no known bugs compiling the JDK (right Alex? I'm not completely hallucinating this right?)
> 
> Why OpenJDK 7 should be restricted to 10.7 ?
> 
> I have to second this question, is there any specific reason to drop support for building OpenJDK 7 and 8 on Mac OS X 10.6.x? Is there anything the community can do to help continue ongoing support for 10.6.x as an OpenJDK development platform? I know my personal development machine will likely be on 10.6.x for the foreseeable future, so if I can help keep it supported I'd like to.

I don't think anyone is planning to use 10.7+ APIs, but you just shouldn't expect that anyone will be officially building or testing on 10.6. While nobody is going to actively go out of their way to break 10.6 support, you are on your own if you actually encounter a problem.

Successful products require focus. Focusing on the current shipping OS, and cutting legacy architectures like 32-bit, and centralizing on one compiler narrows the configuration and testing matrix, and keeps everyone moving towards the goal instead of rat-holing on corner cases you only hit on legacy systems.

I for one, welcome any opportunity to accelerate the development process of the macosx-port,
Mike Swingler
Apple Inc.