Kim,
Let's not underestimate the importance of continuous testing throughout
the release cycle. Over the last year alternative platforms and
configurations were broken accidentally not once (and I think the number
is reaching 50 or something). Suggesting a platform to be "not supported
for a release or two" may mean by the time the compiler is good the
amount of issues to fix for a platform to regain quality may become a
blocker for the next LTS. I really hope this is not the option Oracle is
proposing.
We both know what and how long it takes to do a thorough OpenJDK
compiler upgrade. If the community were made aware of this earlier, I
would have definitely started planning for a compiler upgrade for ARM
port in JDK 11.
With that, I conditionally agree with the proposal provided cooperating
ports are given sufficient lead time to upgrade. We started testing ARM
with 7.3 and will report on success.
-Aleksei
On 08/10/2018 22:34, Kim Barrett wrote:
On Oct 6, 2018, at 11:07 AM, Aleksei Voitylov <aleksei.voity...@bell-sw.com>
wrote:
Kim,
from an ARM port perspective, the stable GCC version is 4.9. The port compiles
with stock GCC 7.3 but a lot of testing is required before moving to GCC 7.3. I
agree on the overall direction and we'll commit resources to testing it
further, but from an ARM port perspective it may happen JDK 12 is a little too
optimistic.
GCC x86 is a lot more stable than for ARM32 and AARCH64.
It seems to me that JDK 11 being an LTS might provide an answer to this.
JDK 12 support for C++11/14 on arm32/aarch64 might be somewhat
"experimental" in that it might require a more recent compiler version
that hasn't received as much testing as was done for JDK 11.
Similarly, the AIX/ppc platform might not be supported after JDK 11
until an improved version of the relevant compiler becomes available.
I don't know if such an approach is acceptable to the community, nor
do I know how such a decision might be made. But I think it would be
unfortunate if such issues blocked progress in this area.
