Re: [Jikesrvm-core] All java build process

[David P G. <gr...@us...>]

I think it depends what you mean by an "all java" build process.

There are a number of auxiliary tools that are used to generate portions 
of the source code base and/or preprocess the source code prior to the 
java => class file compilation step.  Some of those steps are done by 
shell scripts, some by Java programs, some by C programs.  As one 
particular example, I don't ever see us replacing the jburg tool (C 
program) that generates the instruction selection module for the opt 
compiler from a set of BURS rules.

If you mean, could the top level build process be driven by ant instead of 
by jconfigure, that might be possible (we have talked about it in the 
past), but is likely to be a non-trivial amount of work.  jconfigure has 
accumulated a number of features that we exploit in the build process and 
I'm not sure if ant will support all of them.

We are working on self-hosting the build process (use Jikes RVM as the 
HOST_VM). 

Also, we have no control over the classpath configuration/build process. I 
suspect it is unlikley that will ever change from being driven by a 
configure script and makefiles since it entails a non-trivial amount of C 
compilation, but you'd have to talk to the classpath folks about that.

--dave