Re: [gentoo-java] icedtea6 bootstrap

["Andrew John Hughes" <gnu_andrew@member.fsf.org>]

2008/9/17 Alon Bar-Lev <alon.barlev@gmail.com>:
> On 9/17/08, Andrew John Hughes <gnu_andrew@member.fsf.org> wrote:
>> First of all, there is no need to go to such lengths removing gcj afterwards.
>>  It's not going to hurt to leave it on.
>
> It takes a lot of resources (disk, time rebuilding, unused components).
> So there is a reason to keep system as small as possible.
>

Err.. time rebuilding is part of the reason _not_ to remove it.
Applications like ecj benefit from being natively compiled by gcj in
my experience.
There is a gcj USE flag in Gentoo for this purpose.

You're probably talking about ~150mb vs. a long re-build time.  I'd take the
150mb and potential future use, especially with today's hard disc sizes.
gcc still takes a while to build even on new machines.

>>  Also, the build depends on jdk >= 1.5 already, so CACAO or JamVM would
>>  do the job fine.  But you'd have similar bootstrap issues, because these
>>  require GNU Classpath and that requires ecj, etc.
>
> So gcj is the best alternative. But what happens if gcc stops
> providing this in favor of OpenJDK?
>

Not likely anytime in the near future.

>>  Building a Java environment can be a nightmare to be honest :)
>>  I guess the only non-GCJ way would be to use Jikes, then an older Classpath
>>  to get ecj working, then build the new ones.
>
> I guess I am asking that icedtea6 does not have such boostrap in package...

That's pretty much impossible, unless you plan to write a compiler that can
cope with 1.5 bytecode in either C or C++, and then alter the OpenJDK
build system to use it :)

Basically you need to be able to build the OpenJDK langtools (written in Java
with 1.5 constructs), then run them (which needs a 1.5-capable Java VM).  Or
some equivalent.

> If it does not provide this, users should have a simple way to
> bootstrap it in Gentoo... Providing a simple script is sufficient.
>

Then feel free to write one as I said.

> Thanks,
> Alon.
>



-- 
Andrew :-)

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