On 26/03/2012 10:33 PM, Alan Bateman wrote:
On 26/03/2012 11:42, Jonathan Gibbons wrote:
Alan,
Really? I'm not sure I agree. If you have a complete and successful
build of JDK 8, then you should pretty much always be able to use that
as a bootstrap JDK.
No argument on that case as everything should match. The case I'm
concerned about is someone with a pre-built or maybe downloaded jdk8
that is a bit stale (doesn't match exactly). In that case I don't think
we can always guarantee that it can be used as the bootstrap JDK. An
example that comes to mind from jdk7 is the NIO based FileManager in the
langtools repository. That isn't normally buildable with the bootstrap
JDK as it uses jdk7 APIs but it has logic to cover the boot cycle build
case where it will be built. If someone where to use some arbitrary
(pre-GA) build as the bootstrap JDK then it may or may not work,
depending on whether the API matches or not.
We've also found this with embedded builds. A slightly older JDK8 fails
to build the latest sources. Normally it is something in langtools that
causes the problem but I've never tried to find the cause, just do a
fresh x86 build (using JDK7 bootstrap) then use that to bootstrap other
builds.
IIRC there are parts of the build that act differently depending on
whether your boot JDK is JDK7 or JDK8.
David
-Alan
