Hello,

On 2015-11-27 02:21, David Holmes wrote:
Hi Erik,

On 26/11/2015 6:17 PM, Erik Joelsson wrote:
Hello,

This is not sjavac, but just the rather new feature javac-server. It
takes the client/server model from sjavac and applies it to plain old
javac. What this means is that when we invoke javac, it will spawn off a
background server process that stays alive for the duration of the
build. All javac compilations are then sent to this server for
processing from a very thin client. The performance gain comes from
running all javac compilations in a warm JVM.

Thanks for clarifying - though now I'm unsure what the difference is between this and sjavac :)

The other main feature of sjavac is tracking dependencies between java classes properly to enable fine grained incremental builds of java code.
I also couldn't say I saw any performance improvement in build times. :(

That's sad. I've looked around and it seems the RE nightly build was a bit faster when the hardware was the same. JPRT jobs will naturally fluctuate a whole lot because of over allocated hypervisors so need a lot of data before you can see clear patterns. On local systems I'm seeing consistent improved build times.
I believe this has been tested enough to try it as default. If things
fail for a certain usecase, the feature can easily be turned off with
--disable-javac-server. If things go really haywire, we can disable it
again. If we didn't change this now, before feature freeze, it would
never get into JDK9, and I think that would be very sad as faster build
times is generally something everyone wants.

Something that doesn't affect the product bits shouldn't be affected by feature freeze in my opinion - there's no "feature". I also expect we continue to make whatever improvements we can to the build system.

I would tend to agree, but it doesn't seem everyone does.
My main concern with using the javac server is ensuring it gets shutdown properly, particularly if things go wrong. I also worry about its capacity to handle multiple concurrent requests from compilations in different parts of the source tree. And I worry that a big javac process may encounter OOME and other resource issues that multiple javac processes would not.

There is a signaling system using file existence. I think the build system removes a file and the server shuts down when it notices (I don't have the details in memory). As a backup, the server will timeout after 2 minutes of inactivity. We configure proper -mx flags for the server in configure, which are separate from other mx configurations. We also reduce the mx flag for the client processes when the server is enabled to reduce resource usage.
I think it may have been more prudent to phase in this change - eg by having JPRT enable it by default.

We could have done it that way. I don't think it was warranted this time however. It seems your worry was warranted though as the bootcycle build broke. I'm posting a fix shortly.

/Erik
Thanks,
David

I will compose an email to jdk9-dev announcing this change.

/Erik

On 2015-11-26 05:57, David Holmes wrote:
Hi Erik, Magnus,

Has this been extensively tested with all our build environments?

It's been a while so could you give an overview of exactly how the
sjavac thing works.

Changes that affect every single person building the JDK should not be
rushed through!

Thanks,
David

On 26/11/2015 12:47 AM, Magnus Ihse Bursie wrote:
On 2015-11-25 15:45, Erik Joelsson wrote:
Doh, here you go:

diff -r 358fb90ae6e6 common/autoconf/build-performance.m4
--- a/common/autoconf/build-performance.m4
+++ b/common/autoconf/build-performance.m4
@@ -411,9 +411,9 @@
   AC_MSG_RESULT([$ENABLE_SJAVAC])
   AC_SUBST(ENABLE_SJAVAC)

-  AC_ARG_ENABLE([javac-server],
[AS_HELP_STRING([--enable-javac-server],
-      [use only the server part of sjavac for faster javac compiles
@<:@disabled@:>@])],
-      [ENABLE_JAVAC_SERVER="${enableval}"],
[ENABLE_JAVAC_SERVER="no"])
+  AC_ARG_ENABLE([javac-server],
[AS_HELP_STRING([--disable-javac-server],
+      [disable javac server @<:@enabled@:>@])],
+      [ENABLE_JAVAC_SERVER="${enableval}"],
[ENABLE_JAVAC_SERVER="yes"])
   if test "x$JVM_ARG_OK" = "xfalse"; then
     AC_MSG_WARN([Could not set -Xms${MS_VALUE}M -Xmx${MX_VALUE}M,
disabling javac server])
     ENABLE_JAVAC_SERVER="no"

Looks good to me.

/Magnus

/Erik

On 2015-11-25 15:38, Magnus Ihse Bursie wrote:
On 2015-11-25 15:11, Erik Joelsson wrote:
Hello,

The --enable-javac-server feature seems to be working well and is
providing considerable speedup when building the JDK. We should make
the option enabled by default.

As an example, on my local machine, a run of "make exploded-image"
without javac server took 00:04:09 and with javac server 00:03:20.
On machines with less cpus I have seen even bigger improvements.

Bug: https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8144039
Patch:
diff -r 358fb90ae6e6 common/autoconf/build-performance.m4
--- a/common/autoconf/build-performance.m4
+++ b/common/autoconf/build-performance.m4
@@ -413,7 +413,7 @@

   AC_ARG_ENABLE([javac-server],
[AS_HELP_STRING([--enable-javac-server],
[use only the server part of sjavac for faster javac compiles
@<:@disabled@:>@])],
-      [ENABLE_JAVAC_SERVER="${enableval}"],
[ENABLE_JAVAC_SERVER="no"])
+      [ENABLE_JAVAC_SERVER="${enableval}"],
[ENABLE_JAVAC_SERVER="yes"])
   if test "x$JVM_ARG_OK" = "xfalse"; then
     AC_MSG_WARN([Could not set -Xms${MS_VALUE}M -Xmx${MX_VALUE}M,
disabling javac server])
     ENABLE_JAVAC_SERVER="no"
diff -r 358fb90ae6e6 common/autoconf/generated-configure.sh

I like that you enable javac-server by default. But the patch was a
bit too hurried. :)

When you change the default value, you are also in fact reversing the
logic of the configure option. As in other such options, the string
listed for AS_HELP_STRING should be "--disable-javac-server", and the
default value listed should be "enabled".

/Magnus




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