>> >> From my perspective, something needs to change, as I found it >> completely impossible to install the old Visual Studio releases the >> JDK demands (and it took ages just to find them). Requiring outdated >> tooling to build the JDK really isn't great. >> >> Stephen >> > > I agree. This is what I meant when I wrote earlier: > > "Also, installing Visual Studio could be easier by making sure that we > always can build with the latest community version, early when it comes > out. Since it is not so easy to find community/express/whatever downloads > for earlier versions of Visual Studio. "
I guess, if you have a clean system that you use for nothing else but playing with OpenJDK, it’s relatively easy. But I have found that keeping multiple VS installations in parallel on a single machine is challenging to say the least. Whenever I want to do something for OpenJDK, I fear for other build environments that have different needs. The gcc/clang suggestion was born out of the assumption that they are much easier to manage/choose from the command line. I still remember the hoops one had to jump through to get a 64bit compiler installed under VS. This all may just be “perceived” difficulties due to unfamiliarity, but they’re still real. The Visual Studio Build Tools may solve most of the issues I have with VS. And perhaps it’s less of a monster to download. -hendrik