New CPU & OS Platform System Properties Updated (original) (raw)

mark.reinhold at oracle.com mark.reinhold at oracle.com
Wed Jan 23 08:38:25 PST 2013

2013/1/10 10:59 -0800, bob.vandette at oracle.com:

Thanks for all the input. Here's an update to the proposal based on the feedback I've received so far.

OS.ARCH ADDITIONS ----------------------------- ... The only remaining problem is that of ABI. For this I propose the addition of a single new property. os.arch.abi

This makes sense, but since you're not proposing to add this new property to the Platform Specification [1] its name should start with "jdk." or "sun.". Current convention would be to use "jdk.", but given that the names of existing closely-related properties already start with "sun." (sun.arch.data.model, etc.), this new property should be named "sun.arch.abi".

This will be set to the industry standard abi name that toolchain vendors use.

For Linux and Android these would be: gnueabi gnueabihf (signifying the EABI hard float ABI) androideabi

Will this property be defined for regular Linux, Mac OS, or Windows builds?

OS.NAME ADDITIONS -----------------------------

My proposal below for os.name stands with the exception of Apple platforms. For iPhone and iPad Java implementations, we will be setting os.name to "iOS" since Apple informed me that there is really no concrete specified relationship between OSX and iOS. They are two very distinct OS platforms and should be treated as such. I would still like to propose os.variant and os.variant.version for Android.

I don't think it makes sense to describe Android as a variant of Linux. Sure, it's built on top of a Linux kernel, but the rest of the environment is vastly different from the typical Linux distro where "os.name" currently has the value "Linux".

In short form, Linux : Android :: Mac OS : iOS.

The "os.name" property should have the value "Android" on Android devices, and "os.version" should be the Android version number.

Given that, I don't see a compelling need to introduce "os.variant" properties at this time.

[1] http://download.java.net/jdk8/docs/api/java/lang/System.html#getProperties%28%29

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