Review OSX universal mode patch

[Mike Swingler]

On May 10, 2012, at 9:20 AM, Julien Ponge wrote:

>> 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?
> 
> +1 
>> * 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.
> 
> Henri has done a fantastic job by making it possible to use Java 7 on the Mac, way before we could get any "official" pre-release of any sort. 
>> * 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.
> 
> Yes, I think most of us do not care about the build passing the TCK or not. We use such builds for development, hence "fresh" is better than "blessed".
>> 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.
> 
> Unfortunately it seems like it has already been lost...

Let's be clear here. Nothing is lost unless it's unmaintained.

If someone with the necessary skills is willing to commit here and now to supporting 32-bit into the future, I'd support that. But without that commitment, there is no point to re-introducing 32-bit support, only to let it rot.

So, any takers?

Mike Swingler
Apple Inc.