Joe Darcy wrote:
:
Yes, we plan to keep at least the javac portions of the langtools
repository buildable with JDK 6 for just such bootstrapping reasons.
For some time, we've had the constraint that javac in JDK (N+1) is
buildable with JDK N, which precludes use of new language features and
direct use of new libraries (reflection can be used for dynamic
lookups of course).
-Joe
Also, Jon Gibbons has a blog entry on this topic which might be useful:
http://blogs.sun.com/jjg/entry/building_javac_for_jdk7
