Head down, clicking away... TimBell

In this episode we begin setting up the build tool chain and fetch a copy of the OpenJDK7 sources.

Java Technology has always been rooted in a Unix/Solaris OS background. To this day, you need a Unix-like environment before building on other platforms. Here we begin to set up the basic tools needed:

1. install Cygwin
   
   
   
   
   • NOTE: Add the following to the Cygwin packages installed by default. You will need them later:

     
     
             Archive->zip
     
             Archive->unzip
     
             Base->tar
     
             Devel->binutils
     
             Devel->make
     
             Interpreters->m4
     
             System->procps
     
             Utils->cpio
     
             Utils->file
     
     

   
   
   • These are not required by the JDK7 build, but as a U*ix developer I find almost everything in Base essential, as well as wget. Feel free to add anything else you would like to have.

     
     
             Base-> "everything"
     
             Web->wget
     
     

   
   
   • If you plan to use ssh/sshd for remote access to the system, add a few more:

     
     
             Admin->cygrunsrv
     
             Net->openssh
     
             Net->rsync
     
     

   
   
   
   


2. The current Cygwin distribution supplies Gnu make version 3.81-2, which is not compatible with the JDK7 Makefiles. Install v3.81 anyway to get the other dependencies, then find a version between 3.78.1 and 3.80 to lay down on top.
   
   Here is make 3.80. If you installed Cygwin into the default location (C:/cygwin), the install scenario might go like this after you open a Cygwin terminal window:

   
   
   mkdir -p /cygdrive/c/temp
   
   cd /cygdrive/c/temp
   
   wget http://cygwin.paracoda.com/release/make/make-3.80-1.tar.bz2
   
   cd /
   
   tar xvjf /cygdrive/c/temp/make-3.80-1.tar.bz2
   
   make --version
   
   

   Thanks to Igor Nekrestyanov for that hint.
   
   On one machine I set up, I needed to track down an unsatisfied reference to cygintl-2.dll before make version 3.80 would work for me. 'cygcheck -hv ./make.exe' was the key that pointed this out.


3. Install your favorite text editor (in my case, xemacs)


4. Install hg (Mercurial) and the forest extension under C:/Mercurial, as described by Daniel Fuchs


5. Edit c:\Mercurial\Mercurial.ini to add:

   
   
   [extensions]
   
   forest=c:/Mercurial/hgforest/forest.py
   
   



6. Pull over your own copy of the OpenJDK source. Open a Cygwin terminal window and:

   
   
   cd G:                   (Or wherever you set aside space for user files)
   
   hg fclone http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk7/jdk7/ jdk7
   
   
   
   cd jdk7
   
   hg fin
   
   



7. Good job. Congratulations! Now for some homework: read the contents of file:///G:/jdk7/README-builds.html