On 01/02/2012 18:26, Volker Simonis wrote:
I think the prerequisite for a port can not be that there exists
access to it on "x86 hardware".
With this constraint there will never be an OpenJDK port to other
architectures like PPC/Itanium/ARM to name just a few.
(By the way, there once upon a time was a mips -porting project
http://openjdk.java.net/projects/mips-port/ which was hosted at
http://icedtea.classpath.org/hg/openjdk6-mips and which seems to be
dead now although it probably didn't run on x86 hardware:)
On the other hand, I think it is valid to request build/test access to
a platform if there is a port for that platform. However I think the
modalities for such an access should be handled by the group which
leads the port.
The real problem with such an access is that the current Oracle
build/test infrastructure is NOT open and does not easily allow the
integration of external machines. This is a pain point since long time
and we constantly here that Sun and now Oracle is working on it (don't
want to blame anybody here!) - but it's just the way how it currently
works. After all it seems that we get a new bug tracking system REAL
SOON now. The next steps would be a new review system AND of course an
open, extensible(from outside Oracle), automatic build and test
system.
But until we get there, I think an AIX port project would be the
appropriate way to handle such changes. Of course IBM would be free to
make some build/test hardware/infrastructure available and if that
works pretty well it would probably accelerate the integration of the
port into the mainline.
This thread highlights that we need to figure out how OpenJDK can
accommodate additional ports going forward. I would be interested to
hear how other projects do this. I've heard of projects that have a core
set of platforms and then additional teams of volunteers that keep ports
that aren't as main stream up to date. If OpenJDK takes on too many
platforms then there is the risk that we spend a lot of time just trying
to keep things stable and it also means needing ready access to every
platform (I suspect this is what Phil is concerned about). There are
probably other things we can learn that would help with the code layout
too (the jdk repo has to change).
-Alan
