On 25/06/2008, Dmitri Trembovetski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > snip..
> > anybody ever tried it on windows. In theory with cygwin you should be > > able to get enough of the gnu toolchain to get it working. But icedtea > > > > Theories seldom work well when applied to Windows, unfortunately, > as Kelly would attest. But I guess we won't know until we try. > > I can guarantee that configure will fail on Windows; it tests for ALSA and fails if it isn't found. I think this is stopping Mac OS X and probably will stop OpenSolaris too so probably should be made optional. twisti, how did you get round this for OpenSolaris? I also think the fact that it tests for X headers and libraries would be a fundamental flaw. They may be present with cygwin but I doubt that the X peers will be built on Microsoft Windows. > > autotools support was also added to make bootstrapping through other > > libre java implementations like gcj possible. The cygwin gcj port > > however is, as far as I know, still a version behind the version we > > really need (including 1.5 language support). That said, there is a > > --with-openjdk configure flag that should in theory work as soon as you > > have an pre-existing openjdk build already. But we would indeed need > > testers for that platform. For some reason it isn't a very popular > > development platform for Free Software hackers. > > > > How the Free Software hackers would ensure that their changes > to the shared code in the openjdk don't break Windows if they > never build or test there? Unfortunately that could easily > happen (and did in the past). > I had this thought when reading the OpenJDK developers guide. I think a continuous build system is needed for OpenJDK in the very near future, if you want to guarantee this. FOSS developers aren't going to use a non-Free platform like Windows, and are unlikely to use a partially non-Free one like OpenSolaris. I don't see any reason IcedTea couldn't be built on other platforms as well. I think it's a generally useful tool while the build system remains as is in OpenJDK: * It remembers the 37 or so environment variables used to configure the OpenJDK build. I'd end up doing something similar myself if it wasn't for IcedTea via a script. * It tests for dependencies *apriori*. Some of this is done by the sanity check in OpenJDK, but I don't believe it checks as much and the checks are nowhere near as easy to create. * As Mark mentioned, it allows the existing Free Java environments to be used to build. This is essential until OpenJDK is ubiquitous, which will take time. For these reasons, I'd use IcedTea even if it wasn't applying patches to fix issues or overlaying additional stuff like javaws, gcjwebplugin, Gervill and Rhino. On a side note, can someone tell me why IMPORT_BINARY_PLUGS is still true by default even though the SNMP plugin is optional now (and thus no plugs are needed). I think the great work in making OpenJDK6 encumbrance free has largely been missed by many people -- it took me a failed build and grep to work out that I needed this option which doesn't seem to be documented. > Thanks, > Dmitri > > -- Andrew :-) Support Free Java! Contribute to GNU Classpath and the OpenJDK http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath http://openjdk.java.net PGP Key: 94EFD9D8 (http://subkeys.pgp.net) Fingerprint: F8EF F1EA 401E 2E60 15FA 7927 142C 2591 94EF D9D8
