> My concerns with the patch is the necessity of introducing these platform > specific ifdefs into what is notionally shared code - yes there are already > ifdefs in there but I still dislike seeing this. And I think the various > "arch" variables are being misused in ways that ultimately lead to confusion > - the OSX build shouldn't require a completely different understanding of > the build system.
As Scott mentioned there is 2 binaries build and assembled, one in 32 bits and another in 64 bits. This is a great strength of OSX avoiding to provide 2 differents binaries and so 2 differents packages. > I was not familiar with the Universal build and to be honest it seems to be > more of a hindrance than a help. If the build was done as two passes: 32-bit > then 64-bit with a stage at the end to produce the universal binary, then > bit-specific make variables could continue to work as they were intended - > is that possible? To me its not an hindrance but a great feature. There is some OSX gurus around, Mike and Scott to name a few and they could give more technicals informations. > I also think this should be taken to JDK8 first. No problem to get this ported to JDK8 first then backported to JDK7u.
