On Thu, 18 Jan 2024 09:23:24 GMT, Magnus Ihse Bursie <i...@openjdk.org> wrote:
> > (Sometimes I wonder whether Java could've gone the way V8 went and used > > Python or Java itself as the build system instead, oh well) > > While I think we're stuck with make for the long run, a long-term goal for me > has been (and still is) to replace autoconf with a system written in Java. > Fortunately, we have a well defined interface: The user runs `configure` with > a set of well-know arguments, we check for a bunch of requirements and the > validity of the requested build configuration, and generates a well-defined > spec.gmk file as a result. This tight encapsulation means it is possible to > make a drop-in replacement in Java. The challenge is "just" to make sure we > don't loose any functionality, nor skip over any of the odd fixes and > adaptation to real-world build systems that the current configure script has > collected over the years. That sounds like a huge potential improvement, at least to me. I've also just come across JEP-138 (Fascinating cache of JDK history within that JEP! Never knew the JDK used to only work with make), so it's interesting to see if autoconf can be phased out after its introduction 9 years ago. If I understand you correctly, this new hypothetical system would replace autoconf as such? configure -> autoconf -> compiled configure -> make to configure -> compile Java -> Java configure program -> make ------------- PR Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/17401#issuecomment-1898128782
