Hotspot Debugger on Mac OS X Java 1.6 32-bit

[Derek Shinaberry]

I am so far out of my depth here that I am not even sure which mailing  
list to start with, but the serviceability-dev seemed as good a place  
as any to begin.

First of all, I am NOT well versed in Java, particularly the minutia  
and all things VM related.  I am well versed in C++, which led me to  
believe that I might have half a chance when it comes to debugging a  
problem inside the VM.

I'm running Mac OS X 10.5.8 on a 32-bit Core Duo processor, which  
doesn't support Java 6.  So, I'm attempting to use OpenJDK 6 installed  
using MacPorts.

After some issues getting the build to work, I figured out what needed  
patching and succeeded in building and installing openjdk6.  So far,  
so good.

The program I'm running that required Java 6, called Marketcetera,  
crashes fairly frequently.  Using gdb to investigate the crash, I  
figured out that it has to do with 16-byte stack alignment  
requirements on Mac OS X.  I discovered a patch by Landon Fuller that  
attempts to address the issues.  I fought for a while to get that  
patch integrated and building, but it finally built and installed.   
Still having the same crash and it is still related to stack alignment.

I've tracked it down to code that is being generated at runtime, so  
gdb isn't much use in discovering exactly what code is the source of  
the problem.  Enter the Hotspot Debugger. (Finally, he gets to the  
point!)

It doesn't appear that HSDB is built by MacPorts on Mac OS X.  It  
doesn't even look like there is a bsd directory which would presumably  
contain that code.  Has anyone successfully used HSDB on Mac OS X?   
Can anyone point me in the right direction for being able to  
understand what is going on inside the VM on Mac OS X?  Any help would  
be much appreciated.

Cheers,
Derek