Hi Raffaello Hope this isn't too late, but if you're merely looking for a free as opposed to an open source compiler to build OpenJDK, then Visual Studio Express edition can be used too:
http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/build-dev/2009-December/002641.html I've documented some other Windows build gotchas in that email too. Good luck Damjan On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 5:42 PM, Raffaello Giulietti <[email protected]> wrote: > Let me put things in perspective. > > I'm not interested in building OpenJDK7 per se. I would use the binary > snapshots, were it not for the fact that, for my purposes, I need the > latest extensions provided by the MLVM project. Unfortunately, there is > no binary snapshot for that, so I need to download the Mercurial > repository, apply the MLVM specific patches and build it. > > Now, I invested two frustrating days in trying to build the "pure" > OpenJDK7, i.e., without the MLVM extensions. I did it according to the > details described in the quite complete "OpenJDK Build README" page. So > I used the expected licensed VisualStudio compiler. The problems I > encountered can be generally grouped in the "path not found" category, > be it because of spaces in the path, because of \ versus /, etc. As a > consequence, I didn't even try a build with the MLVM extensions. > > To be clear, I'm not complaining about the README or the like. I'm only > reporting my experience with such a complex system and its build. > > So, the real reason behind my request for a MinGW based build is that it > would be a second chance to try a build of the MLVM. But since nobody > seems to have first-hand experience with OpenJDK7/MinGW, I'll gather my > energies and my patience and retry with VisualStudio. > > RG > > > > On 2010-04-21 18:40, Kelly O'Hair wrote: >> >> On Apr 21, 2010, at 5:58 AM, Raffaello Giulietti wrote: >> >>> Hello, >>> >>> I'm wondering if anybody has already tried to build OpenJDK7 on Windows >>> using the MinGW suite. >> >> If they have, I never heard from them. >> >>> >>> * Is there anything known to be a hard to circumvent show stopper? >> >> To me the basic problem is that with "Windows" it is hard to separate >> the code >> dependencies on the OS, some Windows SDK, something specific to Visual >> Studio, >> etc. I'm not saying it would be impossible, but it is not a simple >> change and >> parts of the jdk might be very difficult to disconnect from Visual Studio >> dependencies. The code has assumed Visual Studio for a long long time. >> >> If someone did it, and we were able to build either way, and the changes >> weren't >> too outrageous, I'm sure we consider accepting that contribution. >> But I just don't think it will be that simple. >> >>> * Is it known why Visual C++ is still the reference build system on >>> Windows? >> >> It was probably chosen as the defacto standard on Windows a long time >> ago and >> there was never any value in changing that. >> The performance was probably a key issue, and whether or not you could >> convert >> to a different compiler set, before the official builds would ever >> change you >> would need some very detailed performance measurements to verify no loss of >> performance. That's not an easy job, or simple either. >> >> --- >> >> Any change to the compilers used to create the binary JDKs we distribute >> is always >> a change made very carefully. It might provide significant benefits, but >> the >> hidden dangers are often difficult to find and diagnose. >> I know this binary distribution model is of less interest to some who >> just want >> to build the openjdk source for a particular platform, but it certainly >> is a >> critical issue for us. Compiler changes are carefully tracked. >> >> -kto >> >>> >>> Thanks >>> Raffaello >> > >
