Tim Ellison wrote:
On 23/Jul/2009 09:43, Sean Qiu wrote:
Do we really need this big change?
There are so many "duplicated" xml files whose original goal is to
achieve modularity.
So each component can be developed and tested separately.
I guess that's the reason that we got so many build scripts on each
modules of classlib.
(It is another story whether they worked as we expected)
I prefer to keep jdktools and classlib separately, it sounds more natural to me.
My gut feeling is also to keep the class library and jdktools separated,
but I'll admit that it is only a gut feeling and not something I can
defend technically.
If it really does make life easier for build then it is something I
could learn to live with. I'd like to hear the arguments though.
I agree. It just feels to me like the VM and classlib are obvious
"units" and putting the additional jre/jdk tools in with either one of
them doesn't sit right. If our goals are to get the jdktools used/looked
at more and to unify the build scripts as much as possible, then I would
suggest improving the federated build for wider use.
At the moment if a contributor wants to just work on classlib, they will
probably just check out classlib trunk and build from there copying in
whichever VM they wish to use. I think it would be better if we made the
federated build the starting point for this kind of development and
improved the build targets it provides so it plays nicely when working
with individual components. For this to work we would need to allow more
control over what source gets checked out/built/tested, so they more
closely reflect the targets within the components - here's a few
examples of what I was thinking of (names like hy.component are just
suggestions, not really important):
"ant -Dhy.component=classlib,jdktools populate-src" - just checkout the
source for classlib and jdktools
"ant -Dhy.component=classlib rebuild-native" - just clean and build the
native code for the classlib module, and automatically populate the
built binaries under the federated target directory
"ant build-java" - build java code across all components. This target
could detect which components have been checked out, much as the
classlib build works out which modules to build automatically by
checking if build targets exists, and only build those so that
hy.component does not always need to be specified.
The above is just a rough idea of how it could be done, but I can see a
few advantages of this approach:
1) The federated build would get used more, giving us a more unified
approach to building Harmony while still allowing contributors to work
in individual areas with the same ease. This should also help remove
some of the build script duplication across components.
2) The java/javaw executables could be moved to jdktools (which makes
more sense than classlib to me) meaning that jdktools would get more
attention also.
3) The common_resources directory would work for those working on the
whole jdk and also for those just working on one or two components, as
they would both use the federated build.
4) If we ever wanted to add components (for example, split portlib into
it's own component) it would be easier managed.
5) If you started working on drlvm only and also wanted to make some
changes to classlib later on, you could just run populate-src specifying
the classlib component to check out the additional source and then carry
on working.
These are just ideas at the moment, but I can see there are benefits to
this approach. Any thoughts/comments?
Regards,
Oliver
Regards,
Tim
--
Oliver Deakin
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