Review OSX universal mode patch

[Charles Oliver Nutter]

On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 10:51 AM, Dalibor Topic
<dalibor.topic at oracle.com> wrote:
> On 5/10/12 5:21 PM, Mike Swingler wrote:
>>The OpenJDK product should be build-able for 32 or 32/64 Universal by anyone else, and should accept contributions to it's maintenance, but if nobody is signing up to keep forward-porting the changes - they don't have a future.
>>
>> Am I missing something here?
>
> That's why I'm asking the questions. I want to know what to expect -
> a single patch for some or other build issue, a full porting effort,
> or something else entirely.

Isn't that was OSS is about? You get what you can? :)

Frankly, it seems a little silly to me to expect that anyone would
even be capable of maintaining 32/universal OpenJDK builds for OS X
unless you make the first step of making it *possible* to build
32/universal OpenJDK for OS X. Making them buildable seems like a
first step, eh?

For my part, I don't care much about universal builds, but since JRuby
runs on platforms where users will be running 32-bit it is much more
convenient for me to be able to confirm 32-bit behavior if there's a
build for it. Universal is a simple way for me to have both in one
install on OS X, so I can at least do most of my 32 vs 64-bit testing
without booting into Linux or Windows.

> I'm a bit puzzled by the excitement, fwiw. ;)

Perhaps there's just a communication problem here...

* Is there community interest in having 32/universal build support in
OpenJDK on OS X? I think the answer is obviously yes.
* Has anyone stepped up to provide patches to make 32/universal builds
possible on OS X? The answer is also yes.
* Does OpenJDK work in 32-bit or universal modes on OS X? "Works" is
hard to answer definitively, without running the TCK, but *none* of
Henri's builds (which you praised openly at FOSDEM, Dalibor) have run
TCK either, right? So it "works" as well as any build of OpenJDK that
hasn't run TCK, which is very likely *all* community builds in the
wild.

openjdk-osx-build is a valuable resource for any of us working on OS
X, and it would be a terrible shame to lose it.

- Charlie