Windows: Replace VisualStudio with gcc/clang?

[Thomas Stüfe]

On Mon 12. Mar 2018 at 20:19, Magnus Ihse Bursie <
magnus.ihse.bursie at oracle.com> wrote:

> On 2018-03-12 17:13, Thomas Stüfe wrote:
>
> I wonder how much of the perceived difficulty of Windows as build platform
> is really the fault of Visual Studio. I find it quite easy to install.
>
> But the required Cygwin install could be better documented: I have a text
> file somewhere with all required packets, but I do not know if an official
> documentation exists.
>
> doc/building.md?
>
> I quote:
>
> Apart from the basic Cygwin installation, the following packages must also
> be
> installed:
>
>   * `autoconf`
>   * `make`
>   * `zip`
>   * `unzip`
>
> Often, you can install these packages using the following command line:
> ```
> <path to Cygwin setup>/setup-x86_64 -q -P autoconf -P make -P unzip -P zip
> ```
>
> Nowadays, it's actually not more complicated than that. My personal
> recommendation is btw to install apt-cyg (
> https://github.com/transcode-open/apt-cyg) to make package installation
> even more "debian-like"; then you can just do "apt-cyg install autoconf
> make unzip zip". I might turn this into an official recommendation by
> including it in the build readme at some time. :-)
>
>
I did not know that. Very interesting, will try. We should talk more often
about these things :)

..Thomas


> /Magnus
>
>
>
> Then there is the annoying freetype dependency, which soon will be history
> thanks to Phil Race (8193017).
>
> Also, installing Visual Studio could be easier by making sure that we
> always can build with the latest community version, early when it comes
> out. Since it is not so easy to find community/express/whatever downloads
> for earlier versions of Visual Studio.
>
> (Just my 5c).
>
> Best Regards, Thomas
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 12, 2018 at 11:18 AM, Magnus Ihse Bursie <
> magnus.ihse.bursie at oracle.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Hendrik,
>>
>> This sounds like something that should be discussed on build-dev, rather
>> than jdk-dev.
>>
>> Short answer to your question: There's no technical reason why it would
>> not be possible to use clang or gcc on Windows. However, the code is full
>> of assumptions that "compiling on Windows" == "compiling using the
>> Microsoft toolchain", and it will certainly take a lot of effort to hunt
>> all these down and fix them properly.
>>
>> Personally, I don't think it's worth the effort. It's unlikely that the
>> resulting binary will have any significant change in performance (at least
>> not any positive one), and it is likely to continuously break since people
>> will be adding new code with the "windows" == "microsoft toolchain"
>> assumption.
>>
>> Question: Is the Visual Studio Express (
>> https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/visual-studio-express/) such a hassle to
>> install?
>>
>> /Magnus
>>
>>
>> On 2018-03-06 12:17, Hendrik Schreiber wrote:
>>
>>> Hey,
>>>
>>> inspired by the recent news that Chrome ditched the Microsoft C++
>>> compiler and replaced it with gcc/clang (
>>> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/03/chrome-on-windows-ditches-microsofts-compiler-now-uses-clang/),
>>> I’m wondering wether that’s possible and desirable for OpenJDK, too.
>>>
>>>  From my point of view: Yes.
>>>
>>> Downloading, installing etc. Visual Studio is a major pain for anybody
>>> usually working on another platform. Whenever I encounter a bug that’s
>>> Windows specific, I pretty much always give up the idea to create a fix and
>>> instead just report a bug. It’s just too much of a hassle to create a
>>> working build environment.
>>>
>>> So has migrating to gcc/clang for Windows been evaluated? Is it an
>>> option at all? Would it make things easier or harder? What do you think?
>>> Besides ease of use, how would such a move affect performance?
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> -hendrik
>>>
>>
>>
>
>