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 >
