OpenJDK Bug States

Until the OpenJDK project converts to Bugzilla, I thought some more information about how our internal bug tracking system works might help people watching the current situation.

The OpenJDK change requests (CRs) or bugs are currently visible at bugs.sun.com.

There are 11 states for a CR and the normal change of state is the following:

1. Dispatched: The initial state for a new CR.
2. Incomplete: Something critical is missing from the CR.
3. Accepted: CR was accepted, the first step in being investigated and fixed.
4. Defer: Work on this CR is on hold.
5. Cause Known: A basic understanding of the problem is known.
6. Fix Understood: A basic fix is now understood.
7. Fix in Progress: The assigned engineer is actively working on the fix or getting it integrated.
8. Fix Available: A changeset or the actual fix has been made available in a team area.
9. Fix Failed: Something went wrong with the fix.
10. Fix Delivered: The changeset or fix has been integrated into the master area and will show up in the next build promotion.
11. Closed: There are many reasons why a bug will be in the closed state. It might be verified as fixed, closed as a duplicate, closed as 'not a bug' or closed as 'will not fix'.

The states 1-9 are considered "unresolved", so until a bug becomes "10 - Fix Delivered" or "11 - Closed", it is still considered unresolved. So being "unresolved" may mean that a fix is available, just not in a position to be made part of a formal build promotion.

The bugs.sun.com interface is read-only and somewhat crude, but you can query the bug information, for example the Unresolved JDK Build Subcategory Bugs and RFEs. Hope this helps explain things.

-kto

Posted at 12:25PM May 11, 2008 by kto in Java  |  Comments[0]

ZZ Top

Last night we drove to Dixon, California and saw the legendary hard rock band ZZ Top.

ZZ Top as they looked in the 1980's and still look this way in 2008!	Sharp Dressed Man Music Video (One of my favorites)

-kto

Posted at 01:01PM May 10, 2008 by kto in General  |  Comments[1]

Sun Studio Compilers on LINUX?

With the magic of Mercurial, you can see changesets, like this one: http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk7/jdk7/hotspot/rev/485d403e94e1. Which Serguei Spitsyn integrated recently.

But wait, what does this changeset actually mean? Sun Studio on Linux? Does that make sense? YES! It does and it's true. Mind you, it's just Hotspot that can be built with the Sun Studio compilers on Linux right now, but it's an important piece, the Hotspot C++ code is not a trivial pile of code to compile and optimize correctly. My hat is off to the Sun Studio team in making this all happen. What should be interesting now is how well the rest of the tools work like dbx and the analyzer/collector.

More can be read about the Sun Studio Linux Compilers at the Sun Studio Site.

Humm, I guess I'm now on the hook to see if the rest of the OpenJDK can be setup to build with Sun Studio on Linux.... Back to work...

-kto

P.S. No, we are not abandoning gcc/g++, just providing choices on how the OpenJDK can be built.

Posted at 12:47PM May 07, 2008 by kto in Java  |  Comments[7]

InfoQ Article on Git, Mercurial, and Bzr

A while back Sébastien Auvray asked me some questions about the OpenJDK Mercurial conversion. His article was recently published at http://www.infoq.com/articles/dvcs-guide.

Has some interesting information and stats about Git, Mercurial, and Bzr.

-kto

Posted at 12:18PM May 07, 2008 by kto in Java  |  Comments[0]

JDK Build Readme Collection

A collection of links to various JDK Build readme files.

• OpenJDK Build Home Page
• OpenJDK 7 Build README
OpenJDK 6 Build README (inside the source bundle from the download site, file README-builds.html)
• OpenJDK NetBeans Build README
• JDK 7 JRL Build README
• JDK 7 Build README
• JDK 6 Build README
• JDK 5 SCSL Build README

Posted at 04:07PM Apr 30, 2008 by kto in Java  |  Comments[0]

OpenJDK7, Solaris, and Sun Studio 12 Compilers

We are starting work to update the compilers and build OS releases used to build OpenJDK7 and JDK7. The implications of a build system OS change may mean that the JDK7 binary bundles may support fewer OS releases. So this is a bit of a status report, and a bit of a heads up. Hopefully most people will cheer over this news, but we'll see.

Solaris

On Solaris we have already moved to Solaris 10 as the base OS, which means that the build bundles will no longer run on Solaris 8 or Solaris 9 systems. We will also be moving from the Sun Studio 11 compilers to the Sun Studio 12 compilers. Sun Studio 12 is FREE for SDN members (registration is free too). Keep in mind that this doesn't mean that you can't build with Sun Studio 11, just that we will focus on using Sun Studio 12. At some point using older tools or OS releases to build the OpenJDK may become an issue, but it is not our intent to create these issues. There are some places in the JDK where we would like to depend on some newer features of the OS being available, so there are no promises that the OpenJDK7 sources will stay buildable on Solaris 8 or 9, but currently they are.

The Solaris Makefile changes for Sun Studio 12 (SS12) will include changing to new -xarch options as described in the "What's New In The Compilers" document. The old -xarch options will continue to work fine, but generate warning errors, and so the change to the new options is to avoid the warning errors.

Note that since we still use the assembler that comes with the Solaris system at /usr/ccs/bin/as, we still have to supply it with the old option spellings.

We did run into two build issues so far:

• Using -xO4 built .o files with dtrace is giving us some problems. We suspect the optimizer may have tossed some C++ methods that exist only for dtrace probes. We had to change -xO4 to -xO3 -g on three files in hotspot.
• We had to revert the C++ debug format from Dwarf2 to stabs with the option -xdebugformat=stabs. We were getting some ld errors on some Elf sections during link time. We suspect this is a known problem with Elf COMDAT sections and will be watching for a fix.

It may be a while before we push these Makefile changes to the OpenJDK repositories. Changing compilers with the JDK on any platform is not as trivial a task as people might think. With Solaris and the Sun Studio compilers, we have an advantage, knowing the team doing the compilers. But with any compiler change, our biggest issue becomes performance and correctness. Not so much the performance and correctness of the C/C++ generated code, but the combination of this C/C++ code with the Hotspot generated code. It's not unusual to have bad runtime interactions between the C/C++ generated code, and the Hotspot generated code, on any platform and with any compiler revision.

So the next steps will involve running formal benchmarks to verify that we haven't regressed in performance. A somewhat difficult task given the moving target that OpenJDK7 is right now.

Linux

We already know that building the OpenJDK with different Linux releases and gcc compiler versions is working, so with Linux we just need to advance to a slightly newer Linux release as the base OS, and one that gives us the largest set of deployed targets. We still run the risk of performance and correctness issues like with Solaris, so the same benchmark exercises will need to be done. This will mean that the JDK7 binary bundles will no longer run on some older Linux systems. That doesn't mean it can't be built for these versions, just that the binary bundles we supply may be limited in the Linux releases it supports.

Windows

There is some efforts going on to see about changing to the Visual Studio .NET 2008 compilers, and potentially Windows XP as the base OS for 32bit. Again, dito on the performance and correctness issues. This will mean that the JDK7 binary bundles will no longer work on Windows 2000.

Official Build Configurations

The current list of build machines for JDK7 is documented in the JDK7 Build README:

• Solaris 10 SPARC
• Solaris 10 SPARCV9
• Solaris 10 X86
• Solaris 10 X64
• Linux X86 Redhat Enterprise Advanced Server 2.1 update 2
• Linux X64 Suse 8 Enterprise Server - AMD64 Edition
• Windows 2000 X86
• Windows 2003 X64

Official Supported Configurations

The Official JDK6 supported configurations are those configurations that we have tested the JDK6 builds on. The official supported list for JDK7 will need to be adjusted of course, certainly Solaris 8 and Solaris 9 support for JDK7 will be removed.

Other Configurations

The OpenJDK sources can be built on many more systems as documented in the OpenJDK Build README. The intent with the OpenJDK is to allow for it to be built on as many configurations as possible, but that does not necessarily mean that a configuration will become any kind of officially supported JDK7 configuration. The OpenJDK project is an open-source project, and to date, binary builds have not been provided.

Other architectures like IA64 or PowerPC are or may be considered "ports", depending on the need for changing the Hotspot VM to generate code for a different architecture. There are several "ports" being talked about on the OpenJDK porters alias, see the OpenJDK Mailing Lists. Recently, changes to Hotspot were pushed into the OpenJDK source repositories that allowed for Linux SPARC builds of Hotspot, see the changeset Open-source hotspot linux-sparc support. Email exchanges on the distro-pkg alias indicate people are building on Linux IA64, not sure if they have been successful or not, I have no idea how IA64 this would be. Of course, successfully building is only step 1, the next step is to see if it works, and works reliably. The point being that many people are taking the OpenJDK sources or IcedTea and building on many configurations.

The funding needed to take on and support a new official configuration is considerable. We hope that the OpenJDK developers contribute back the changes made to port or build on any configuration. But adding a new configuration to the official JDK7 build configuration list is a high level decision.

-kto

Posted at 03:35PM Apr 30, 2008 by kto in Java  |  Comments[6]

OpenJDK: Dude, Where's My Changeset?

Developers are asking where the changesets are, reminds me of that movie Dude, Where's My Car?, "Dude, Where's My Changeset?"

So it seemed appropriate to bring up the "OpenJDK Integration Wheel" again and talk about how a changeset moves around:

Let's look at the changesets (fixes) pushed to the Swing Team Area. Let's pretend a changeset was pushed to the Swing area and is now publicly available. Not picking on the Swing team, just didn't want to change the picture :^) Feel free to change the example from "Swing" to "Build" and the Build Team Area. And Then? Immediately, anyone in the Swing team can pull these changesets down and have access to them. Other developers from other teams could also pull from this Swing area to get the change, but that's a bit abnormal, certainly possible, just not normal. And Then? Depending on the Integration Schedule these changesets will likely remain in the Swing Team Area until the official Swing integrator pushes those changesets into the Master area (the Integration Process). And Then? Once integrated into the master area, the other teams still may not see these changesets until their own integrators choose to "sync up" or send these new changesets in the Master area into their own team areas. This "sync up" usually happens as a team integrator prepares for the integration, so based on the order in the Integration Schedule, it could be a day or many days before a team will see changes that have been pushed into the master area. And Then? Even after the team area has the changesets, a developer won't see the changesets until he pulls the changesets into his own area.

So you can see how sometimes it's hard to find a changeset. Somewhat independent of the changesets flowing into the various team areas, the Release Engineering Team will use the Master area and attempt to create a promoted build, and if successful will create tags in the Master repositories to record what changesets were included in a promotion.

Some people will find this whole process frustrating, but there are some big advantages. The delay of the changesets getting into the Master area allows for the team most closely associated with the change to test and verify, from that team's perspective. Odds are that bad changesets will get caught by the team, and this protects the other teams. The process the team integrator goes through includes additional testing to verify the changesets being integrated are solid for everyone. It's not unusual for an integrator to run into a problem with his team's changesets, which again protects all the other teams from potential disasters. Granted, regressions will still happen, but really nasty regressions are usually caught early.

Hope this helps explain things.

-kto

Posted at 12:02PM Apr 18, 2008 by kto in Java  |  Comments[0]

How Infrastructure Engineers are like Drug Pushers

I've found myself in a situation where I am working on basic engineering infrastructure almost all the time. Things like fixing build issues, working on Makefiles, writing tools to help developers get their job done, and keeping an automated build&test system up and running. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind it, and rather enjoy doing things that effectively makes everyone more productive. It's a unique job, a bit of the old Jack of all trades position.

But am I like a drug pusher? After an email exchange with a fellow infrastructure engineer, we came up with this list:

Drug Pusher	Infrastructure Engineer
The product can be addictive	The tools can be addictive
Users rarely admit we exist	Developers rarely admit we exist
Users don't talk about us openly	Developers don't talk about us openly
The product make most users feel good	The tools make most developers feel productive
Users go nuts without the product	Developers go nuts without the tools
Users would like these supplies to be free	Developers expect these tools to be free
When the product doesn't work for them anymore, they expect new products that work exactly like the old products, but better	When the tools don't work anymore, new tools are expected, but they must work exactly like the old tools, but better
When the users are under the influence and happy, nothing else matters	When the developers are happy and everything is working fine, nothing else matters

Now if I could just figure out how to make lots of money from infrastructure tools. ;^)

-kto

Posted at 08:38PM Apr 10, 2008 by kto in Java  |  Comments[2]

Clop Clop Clop

I wake up at 4AM wondering why I've woken up. I lay there with my eyes open and I hear a strange sound "clop clop clop". What is that sound? It sounds like dress shoes, no, more like high heels on the concrete walk outside the bedroom windows.

The windows and blinds are closed, then there is the sound again "clop clop clop". It has GOT to be someone walking around my backyard. Why would someone be walking around my backyard? I lay there wondering what to do. I could grab my king size MagLite flashlight and step outside in my boxers and see who is there, would that be a wise move? I should probably buy a shotgun for these kind of events, wonder if the wife would approve of that kind of purchase, I could keep it under the bed. She of course is sleeping soundly. Probably not the time to talk to her about buying a shotgun.

There it is again "clop clop clop"... then something different, "clup clup clup", a deeper sound, so I have a woman in high heels and a man in dress shoes walking around my back yard. The flashlight in boxers probably would not be a good idea, besides I'm very comfy in my warm bed right now. Should I call 911? I haven't really seen them, but they could be evil assassins, like that lady assassin on "CSI: NY" TV show. Oh geez, I should just get up and see who is in my yard, what is the big deal?

Then I hear it again, "clop clop clop" and a "clup clup clup". Ok, don't be silly, if someone is walking around my yard at 4AM, there must be a perfectly innocent reason. Maybe they are real estate agents, humm, at 4AM, nah. A neighbor looking for something? In high heels? At 4AM? I might do something like that (not in high heels) but none of my neighbors are that strange. Was I expecting a relative to show up? And the door was locked so they are walking around in high heels outside our bedroom window? Nah.

All of a sudden the sound changes... it moves, it moves so that it sounds like it is coming from inside the room. What the heck? I sit up in bed and look down at the floor below the windows, and there is the dog, licking itself, "clop clop clop ... clup clup clup".

I wonder if I could still talk the wife into the shotgun?

Posted at 07:29PM Apr 04, 2008 by kto in General  | 

My Author List

I like to read novels, fiction mostly, favoring detective or mystery novels. Just thought I would share some opinions on a few. Keep in mind that I am no expert on writing, I just know what I like.

• Dean Koontz is one of my very favorites. He manages to take a fairly unbelievable situation or concept and hook you line and sinker so that by the end of the book, you are scratching your head wondering how he came up with this story. His more recent Odd Thomas and Frankenstein books are fantastic. He seems to just get better and better.
• Thomas Perry is a great read. His Jane books are about people finding new identities and I loved every one of them, and wished there were more. I've read everything he has written and jump at the chance to read more.
• John Sanford is a good read, maybe a little creepy, but his Kidd series of novels are some of my favorite books. I do find it hard to remember which ones of the Prey novels I have read, but have probably read 80% of them.
• Robert Ludlum, what can you say, his Bourne novels are on the big screen. Fairly complex and somewhat longer novels, but always well done. I'm sure I haven't read all of his novels, but probably half of them.
• Clive Cussler is an adventure action novelist and I love his books, and have read them all, including the new ones he is starting to co-author with others (including his son). Some people might find this books a little too much James Bondish but he always manages to tie in some history (which I like) with some current event or concern about the environment or some kind of risk to the planet.
• Robert B. Parker books are pure detective books, in the spirit of Raymond Chandler. Always a good read.
• Walter Mosley is a different author. I first started reading his books when Clinton was in the White House and mentioned him as one of his favorite authors. His books are unique, and I like them, but many people may find then crude or overly explicit, so they are not for everybody. It certainly gives you a different perspective of the L.A.
• Sue Grafton made my life easy by having her books be titled via the alphabet, e.g. "A" Is for Alibi, "B" Is for Burglar, "C" Is for Corpse, ... I was instructed by the person that introduced me to these books to try and start with "A", which did make it easier to keep track. Although centered around the same female detective, the stories are all unique and different. I enjoy all of these books.
• Robert Crais wrote a series on a L.A. detective named Elvis which I found very entertaining. Very easy read, a bit on the macho side. One of his later non-Elvis books "Hostage" was turned into a movie, it was good book, and a good movie.
• Erle Stanley Gardner is most known for his Perry Mason novels. I'm a huge Perry Mason fan, both the T.V. series and the books, although I've read only a handful of the books. I love the details in the books and shows about cars and the California towns (not just L.A. where Perry Mason has his business). Erle was a master at keeping you guessing about 'who dun it', but everyone always laughs when the person that really did it breaks down on the stand and confesses.
• Tony Hillerman books are all centered around the Four Corners area of New Mexico and Arizona. His books are unique, and if you don't appreciate Navajo history and culture you may not appreciate these mysteries. I like the different setting these books provide from your standard detective novels.
• Jack Higgins has written many books, but I've only read the Sean Dillon books. His books are a little predictable, with a bit of an Englishman slant.
• Julia Navarro is a new author and I just finished her book "The Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud". I liked it, and it even got me fascinated with the Shroud of Turin, to the point that I'm now reading a book about the Shroud and it's history. I'm looking forward to more books from Julia.
• J.A. Jance is a great author, and if I have missed reading any of her books I didn't mean to. Always a good read, and I look forward to all her books.
• Lisa Scottoline are lawyer mysteries, and are pretty good books. I try and limit my books about lawyers, I prefer detectives.
• Kyle Mills hasn't written many books, but I will read anything he writes. His books Rising Phoenix, Storming Heaven, Sphere of Influence, and Free Fall were all excellent. Unique plots and good reads.
• Greg Iles hasn't written that many books, but the ones I have read are good. Hard to find his books in the used book stores I go to.
• Janet Evanovich is a hilarious read. The humor and situations created in her books are always entertaining. The "One for the ...", "Two for the ...", series was very entertaining.
• Stephen Hunter was an author I started reading a long time ago. His books center around snipers usually, and in some way gaining justice. I've read all his books, and wished he would write more.
• Michael Connelly is an excellent writer. His books are entertaining and always hold your attention. I've read all his books and look forward to more.
• Anne Perry is an interesting author. Her stories are unique historical mysteries. Interesting enough, she is a convicted murder. I haven't read any of her books recently, suffered from keeping track of which ones I'd read and which ones I hadn't.
• Patricia Cornwell usually writes about coroner stories. I haven't read any of these in a long time. Had trouble keeping them sorted out, but drifted back to detective stories.
• John Saul gives me the creeps. The books are good, very good, but maybe too good. Dean Koontz I can take, but for some reason Saul got on my "If I want to be creeped out" list. (I don't read Stephen King either, I guess I'm not a horror person).
• Len Deighton is new to me. I just finished City of Gold, and found it different and interesting. I'll be checking out more books from him in the future.
• William Diehl is also new to me. I just finished Reign in Hell, which was a pretty good book. I'll be looking for more.
• Ridley Pearson is fairly new to me. Just finished reading my first book by him, looking forward to reading more.
• Leonard Goldberg writes medical mysteries. I just finished Brainwaves, and I liked it. A good read. Not sure I want to read a bunch of medical thrillers, but he will stay on my list.
• John Le Carre is not for me. I find his books entirely too complex and hard to read. I just can't easily get into his books, not sure why.
• Robin Cook is a medical thriller author, probably the, primary one. I recently finished Seizure, which is what got me interested in the Shroud of Turin and led me to Julia Navarro. I've read quite a few of his books, all excellent.
• Michael Crichton, what can you say about this guy. His books are usually scientific thrillers, and written very well. You can never go wrong with his books, unless you have seen the movie, in which case I tend to get frustrated when they don't match up. So I try and read the books first, and when the movie comes out I can be a movie critic when it doesn't follow the book.
• John Lescroart is relatively new to me but I've liked the few books I have read.
• John Case is actually a husband and wife team, and I have only read a few books. Good books, I will read more from John Case.
• Jonathan Kellerman is a psycho thriller author. I read a few of these but they tend to be a bit more disturbing than the typical detective novel, good books, but I try and limit my intake of psycho thrillers.
• Gore Vidal is much more than a historical fiction writer, but that's what I have read from him. Books like Burr, 1876, Empire, and Lincoln. I haven't read any recently, but whenever I get a need for some American History (one of my hobbies), I'll look for a good Gore Vidal historical fiction.

Well, I'm sure I left out some, but maybe this helps someone find a good book to read.

-kto

Posted at 08:01PM Mar 30, 2008 by kto in General  |  Comments[1]