I'm not sure if this request is in-scope for "OpenJDK infrastructure
projects", but I'd like to pipe up in favor of simplifying the
Windows build experience.
Specifically...
1) Update the build to work with Visual C++ 2005 Express, the free
(no-charge) version of the Visual Studio C++ compiler.
The fix isn't too hard, but it requires a bit of figuring:
http://bugs.sun.com/view_bug.do?bug_id=6523947
2) Provide support for building under MSYS make/shell, perhaps instead of
Cygwin.
Cygwin make doesn't handle paths of the form "c:/code/openjdk" and has
stated that they intend not to; they recommend using the MinGW MSYS make
instead of Cygwin make for these purposes.
http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2006-07/msg00671.html
The Mozilla project updated their Cygwin-only build to work under MSYS,
and now offer a convenient installer to set the whole thing up.
Something like that for OpenJDK would be fantastic, though it's just a
dream at this point. :-)
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Windows_Build_Prerequisites
(Note that I DON'T mean that we should support building with MinGW gcc;
that'd be cool, but IMO it's not necessary to build Windows software using
a Free-as-in-speech compiler; using a free-as-in-beer compiler is fine for
non-free platforms.)
I'd hoped to begin work on these myself at some point, though I'm pretty
busy yet. :-(
-Dan
