Windows: Replace VisualStudio with gcc/clang? (original) (raw)

Hendrik Schreiber hs at tagtraum.com
Wed Mar 14 12:23:55 UTC 2018

From my perspective, something needs to change, as I found it completely impossible to install the old Visual Studio releases the JDK demands (and it took ages just to find them). Requiring outdated tooling to build the JDK really isn't great. Stephen I agree. This is what I meant when I wrote earlier: "Also, installing Visual Studio could be easier by making sure that we always can build with the latest community version, early when it comes out. Since it is not so easy to find community/express/whatever downloads for earlier versions of Visual Studio. "

I guess, if you have a clean system that you use for nothing else but playing with OpenJDK, it’s relatively easy.

But I have found that keeping multiple VS installations in parallel on a single machine is challenging to say the least. Whenever I want to do something for OpenJDK, I fear for other build environments that have different needs. The gcc/clang suggestion was born out of the assumption that they are much easier to manage/choose from the command line. I still remember the hoops one had to jump through to get a 64bit compiler installed under VS. This all may just be “perceived” difficulties due to unfamiliarity, but they’re still real.

The Visual Studio Build Tools may solve most of the issues I have with VS. And perhaps it’s less of a monster to download.

-hendrik

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