----- Original Message ----- > On 20/08/15 09:24, Matthias Klose wrote: > > On 08/20/2015 06:36 AM, Tom Tromey wrote: > >> Andrew> No, it isn't. It's still a necessity for initial bootstrapping of > >> Andrew> OpenJDK/IcedTea. > >> > >> Andrew Haley said the opposite here: > >> > >> https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2015-08/msg00537.html > > > > if you need bootstrapping OpenJDK 6 or OpenJDK 7, then having gcj > > available for the target platform is required. Starting with OpenJDK > > 8 you should be able to cross build OpenJDK 8 with an OpenJDK 8 > > available on the cross platform. It might be possible to cross > > build older OpenJDK versions, but this usually is painful. > > Sure, but we don't need GCJ going forward. I don't think that there > are any new platforms to which OpenJDK has not been ported which will > require GCJ to bootstrap. And even if there are, anybody who needs to > do that can (and, indeed, should) use an earlier version of GCJ. It's > not going to go away; it will always be in the GCC repos. And because > newer versions of GCC may break GCJ (and maybe OpenJDK) it makes more > sense to use an old GCC/GCJ for the bootstrapping of an old OpenJDK. >
I don't see how we don't at present. How else do you solve the chicken-and-egg situation of needing a JDK to build a JDK? I don't see crossing your fingers and hoping there's a binary around somewhere as a very sustainable system. >From a personal point of view, I need gcj to make sure each new IcedTea 1.x >and 2.x release bootstraps. I don't plan to hold my system GCC at GCC 5 for the next decade or however long we plan to support IcedTea 2.x / OpenJDK 7. It's also still noticeably faster building with a native ecj than OpenJDK's javac. It would cause me and others a lot of pain to remove gcj at this point. What exactly is the reason to do so, other than some sudden whim? > Andrew. > -- Andrew :) Senior Free Java Software Engineer Red Hat, Inc. (http://www.redhat.com) PGP Key: ed25519/35964222 (hkp://keys.gnupg.net) Fingerprint = 5132 579D D154 0ED2 3E04 C5A0 CFDA 0F9B 3596 4222 PGP Key: rsa4096/248BDC07 (hkp://keys.gnupg.net) Fingerprint = EC5A 1F5E C0AD 1D15 8F1F 8F91 3B96 A578 248B DC07
