On 4/24/24 4:24 AM, Magnus Ihse Bursie wrote:
That is a good question. libiconv is used only on macOS and AIX, for a
few libraries, as you say. I just tried removing -liconv from the
macOS dependencies and recompiled, just to see what would happen.
There were three instances for macOS: libsplashscreen, libjdwp and
libinstrument.
libsplashscreen uses it in splashscreen_sys.m, where it is used to
convert the jar file name.
This is called from the launcher, in java.base/share/native/libjli/java.c
libjdwp uses it in utf_util.c, where it is used to convert file name
and command lines, iiuc.
It is likely that we have similar (but better) ways to convert
charsets elsewhere in our libraries that can be used instead of
libiconv. I guess these are not the only two places where a filename
must be converted from the platform charset to UTF8.
So whatever replacement there might be, it needs to be something that is
available very early in the life of the VM, in fact before there is a VM
running.
-phil.
