bug#26966: New Java bootstrap

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Roel Janssen <address@hidden> writes:

> Ricardo Wurmus writes:
>
>> This patch series removes GCJ and bootstraps the JDK with Jikes.
>>
>> Up to now our Java bootstrap with GCJ involved nasty compromises:
>>
>> * GCJ depended on an iterative Java compiler in the form of a binary of
>>   ECJ (the Eclipse compiler for Java)
>>
>> * The GCJ sources include pre-compiled Java .class files coming from
>>   the GNU Classpath project.
>>
>> I only learned of the second of these problems when I expressed my
>> sadness about the removal of GCJ and Andrew Haley replied that GCJ
>> depended on binaries to a larger extent than I was aware of.
>>
>> Recently Ludo brought up Jikes on #guix and while it first looked like a
>> much less capable compiler (only implementing a limited set of Java 1.5)
>> it turned out to be enough to get a first bootstrap JDK built.  After
>> some experimentation I managed to build a version of ECJ from source,
>> which eventually led the way to a properly bootstrapped JDK with IcedTea.
>>
>> Note that some work is still needed to make it all fully reproducible,
>> but that’s not the primary goal of this patch set.
>
> Overall, this patch series looks fine to me.  Great effort, great job!

Thank you for the review!  I pushed it to master with commit 9117448e7.

--
Ricardo

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