AIX and OpenJDK

[Alan Bateman]

On 01/02/2012 18:26, Volker Simonis wrote:
> I think the prerequisite for a port can not be that there exists
> access to it on "x86 hardware".
>
> With this constraint there will never be an OpenJDK port to other
> architectures like PPC/Itanium/ARM to name just a few.
> (By the way, there once upon a time was a mips -porting project
> http://openjdk.java.net/projects/mips-port/ which was hosted at
> http://icedtea.classpath.org/hg/openjdk6-mips and which seems to be
> dead now although it probably didn't run on x86 hardware:)
>
> On the other hand, I think it is valid to request build/test access to
> a platform if there is a port for that platform. However I think the
> modalities for such an access should be handled by the group which
> leads the port.
>
> The real problem with such an access is that the current Oracle
> build/test infrastructure is NOT open and does not easily allow the
> integration of external machines. This is a pain point since long time
> and we constantly here that Sun and now Oracle is working on it (don't
> want to blame anybody here!) - but it's just the way how it currently
> works. After all it seems that we get a new bug tracking system REAL
> SOON now. The next steps would be a new review system AND of course an
> open, extensible(from outside Oracle), automatic build and test
> system.
>
> But until we get there, I think an AIX port project would be the
> appropriate way to handle such changes. Of course IBM would be free to
> make some build/test hardware/infrastructure available and if that
> works pretty well it would probably accelerate the integration of the
> port into the mainline.
This thread highlights that we need to figure out how OpenJDK can 
accommodate additional ports going forward. I would be interested to 
hear how other projects do this. I've heard of projects that have a core 
set of platforms and then additional teams of volunteers that keep ports 
that aren't as main stream up to date. If OpenJDK takes on too many 
platforms then there is the risk that we spend a lot of time just trying 
to keep things stable and it also means needing ready access to every 
platform (I suspect this is what Phil is concerned about). There are 
probably other things we can learn that would help with the code layout 
too (the jdk repo has to change).

-Alan