Upcoming JDK 8 Platform/Compiler upgrades at Oracle

[Tim Bell]

All-

We have been working on upgrading the build platforms and compilers
used at Oracle to build JDK 8.  The plan is to update to newer build
platforms and tools, as well as reduce the total number of build OS
versions involved.  This is important because the changes we make now
will be with us for the lifetime of JDK 8, including update releases.

These platforms will be used for the EA builds on java.net, the
reference implementation, and the final product shipped by Oracle.

Our target combinations are:

- Linux - Oracle 6.4 64-bit / GCC 4.7.3
- MacOS X - 10.8 64-bit / XCode 4.6.2 / clang [1]
- Solaris X86 - 10 update 10 64-bit / Oracle Solaris Studio 12.3 [2]
- Solaris SPARC - 10 update 10 64-bit / Oracle Solaris Studio 12.3 [2]
- Windows - 2008 R2 64-bit / Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 SP1

For Linux and Windows, the 64-bit platform will also build 32-bit
binaries.

The MacOS build is 64-bit only.

For Solaris we are moving towards removing the legacy 32-bit builds
entirely for both SPARC and X86, and cleaning up the overlay
installation requirements. [3]


Feedback is welcome.  We will send regular updates as we work through
the upgrade process.


Tim

[1] With a fallback position of using XCode 4.6.2 and gcc, pending
     further testing.

[2] With a fallback position of staying with Studio 12.1, pending
     further testing.

[3] http://bugs.sun.com/view_bug.do?bug_id=8020552