If you are eager to try out building the JDK, these simple steps work most of the time. They assume that you have installed Git (and Cygwin, MSYS2 or WSL if running on Windows), and want to clone the main-line JDK repository.
Get the complete source
code:
git clone https://git.openjdk.org/jdk
Run configure:
bash configure
If configure fails due to missing dependencies (to
either the toolchain, build tools, external libraries or the boot JDK), most of the time it prints
a suggestion on how to resolve the situation on your platform. Follow
the instructions, and try running bash configure
again.
Run make:
make images
Verify your newly built JDK:
./build/*/images/jdk/bin/java -version
Run basic tests:
make test-tier1
If any of these steps failed, or if you want to know more about build requirements or build functionality, please continue reading this document.
The JDK is a complex software project. Building it requires a certain amount of technical expertise, a fair number of dependencies on external software, and reasonably powerful hardware.
If you just want to use the JDK and not build it yourself, this document is not for you. See for instance OpenJDK installation for some methods of installing a prebuilt JDK.
Make sure you are getting the correct version. At the OpenJDK Git site you can see a list of all available repositories. Commonly used repositories are:
The JDK Project (the main-line currently in development): https://git.openjdk.org/jdk
The JDK Updates Project, which has one repository per update release, e.g. https://git.openjdk.org/jdk17u for JDK 17.
If you want to build an older version, e.g. JDK 17, it is strongly
recommended that you use the JDK Updates repository, e.g. the
jdk17u, which contains incremental updates, instead of the
JDK Project repository jdk17, which was frozen at JDK 17
GA.
If you are new to Git, a good place to start is the book Pro Git. The rest of this document assumes a working knowledge of Git.
For a smooth building experience, it is recommended that you follow these rules on where and how to check out the source code.
Do not check out the source code in a path which contains spaces. Chances are the build will not work. This is most likely to be an issue on Windows systems.
Do not check out the source code in a path which has a very long name or is nested many levels deep. Chances are you will hit an OS limitation during the build.
Put the source code on a local disk, not a network share. If possible, use an SSD. The build process is very disk intensive, and having slow disk access will significantly increase build times. If you need to use a network share for the source code, see below for suggestions on how to keep the build artifacts on a local disk.
On Windows, if using Cygwin, extra care must be taken to make sure the environment is consistent. It is recommended that you follow this procedure:
Create the directory that is going to contain the top directory
of the JDK clone by using the mkdir command in the Cygwin
bash shell. That is, do not create it using Windows Explorer.
This will ensure that it will have proper Cygwin attributes, and that
it's children will inherit those attributes.
Do not put the JDK clone in a path under your Cygwin home directory. This is especially important if your user name contains spaces and/or mixed upper and lower case letters.
You need to install a git client. You have two choices, Cygwin git or Git for Windows. Unfortunately there are pros and cons with each choice.
The Cygwin git client has no line ending issues and
understands Cygwin paths (which are used throughout the JDK build
system). However, it does not currently work well with the Skara CLI
tooling. Please see the Skara wiki
on Git clients for up-to-date information about the Skara git client
support.
The Git for Windows
client has issues with line endings, and do not understand Cygwin paths.
It does work well with the Skara CLI tooling, however. To alleviate the
line ending problems, make sure you set core.autocrlf to
false (this is asked during installation).
Failure to follow this procedure might result in hard-to-debug build problems.
The JDK is a massive project, and require machines ranging from decent to powerful to be able to build in a reasonable amount of time, or to be able to complete a build at all.
We strongly recommend usage of an SSD disk for the build, since disk speed is one of the limiting factors for build performance.
At a minimum, a machine with 2-4 cores is advisable, as well as 2-4 GB of RAM. (The more cores to use, the more memory you need.) At least 6 GB of free disk space is required.
Even for 32-bit builds, it is recommended to use a 64-bit build
machine, and instead create a 32-bit target using
--with-target-bits=32.
Note: The 32-bit x86 port is deprecated and may be removed in a future release.
At a minimum, a machine with 8 cores is advisable, as well as 8 GB of RAM. (The more cores to use, the more memory you need.) At least 6 GB of free disk space is required.
If you do not have access to sufficiently powerful hardware, it is also possible to use cross-compiling.
In order to use Branch Protection features in the VM,
--enable-branch-protection must be used. This option
requires C++ compiler support (GCC 9.1.0+ or Clang 10+). The resulting
build can be run on both machines with and without support for branch
protection in hardware. Branch Protection is only supported for Linux
targets.
This is not recommended. Instead, see the section on Cross-compiling.
The mainline JDK project supports Linux, macOS, AIX and Windows. Support for other operating system, e.g. BSD, exists in separate "port" projects.
In general, the JDK can be built on a wide range of versions of these operating systems, but the further you deviate from what is tested on a daily basis, the more likely you are to run into problems.
This table lists the OS versions used by Oracle when building the JDK. Such information is always subject to change, but this table is up to date at the time of writing.
| Operating system | Vendor/version used |
|---|---|
| Linux/x64 | Oracle Enterprise Linux 6.4 / 8.x |
| Linux/aarch64 | Oracle Enterprise Linux 7.6 / 8.x |
| macOS | macOS 13.x (Ventura) |
| Windows | Windows Server 2016 |
The double version numbers for Linux are due to the hybrid model used at Oracle, where header files and external libraries from an older version are used when building on a more modern version of the OS.
The Build Group has a wiki page with Supported Build Platforms. From time to time, this is updated by contributors to list successes or failures of building on different platforms.
Windows XP is not a supported platform, but all newer Windows should be able to build the JDK.
On Windows, it is important that you pay attention to the instructions in the Special Considerations.
Windows is the only non-POSIX OS supported by the JDK, and as such, requires some extra care. A POSIX support layer is required to build on Windows. Currently, the supported such layers are Cygwin, MSYS2 and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Of these, Cygwin is the one that has received the most real-world testing and is likely to cause least trouble.
Internally in the build system, all paths are represented as
Unix-style paths, e.g. /cygdrive/c/git/jdk/Makefile rather
than C:\git\jdk\Makefile. This rule also applies to input
to the build system, e.g. in arguments to configure. So,
use --with-msvcr-dll=/cygdrive/c/msvcr100.dll rather than
--with-msvcr-dll=c:\msvcr100.dll. For details on this
conversion, see the section on Fixpath.
Building and testing the JDK requires a well-defined locale to be
guaranteed to run correctly. On non-Windows operating systems, this is
achieved using the LC_* variables, which propagate to all
child processes of the build. Unfortunately, there is no way to set the
locale for a specific process like this in Windows. Instead, changes to
locale can only be made globally, which will affect all applications run
by the user. Furthermore, Windows makes a difference between user locale
and system locale, where the latter determines e.g. the file path
encoding. Both this locale settings affect building and testing the
JDK.
The recommended and supported way of building the JDK on Windows is to set both the system locale and the user locale to US English. The system setting can be changed by going to the Control Panel, choosing "Regional Settings" -> "Administrative" and then pressing on the "Change System Locale" button.
Since this is annoying for users who prefer another locale, we strive to get the building and testing to work on other locales as well. This is on a "best effort" level, so beware! You might get odd results in both building and testing. If you do, remember that locales other than US English are not supported nor recommended.
It is also imperative to install the US English language pack in Visual Studio. For details, see Microsoft Visual Studio.
Install Cygwin as instructed on the home page. It is strongly recommended to use the 64-bit version of Cygwin.
Note: Cygwin has a model of continuously updating all packages without any easy way to install or revert to a specific version of a package. This means that whenever you add or update a package in Cygwin, you might (inadvertently) update tools that are used by the JDK build process, and that can cause unexpected build problems.
The JDK requires GNU Make 4.0 or greater in Cygwin. This is usually not a problem, since Cygwin currently only distributes GNU Make at a version above 4.0.
Apart from the basic Cygwin installation, the following packages must also be installed:
autoconfmakezipunzipOften, you can install these packages using the following command line:
<path to Cygwin setup>/setup-x86_64 -q -P autoconf -P make -P unzip -P zipUnfortunately, Cygwin can be unreliable in certain circumstances. If you experience build tool crashes or strange issues when building on Windows, please check the Cygwin FAQ on the "BLODA" list and the section on fork() failures.
Install MSYS2 as instructed on the home page.
Apart from the basic MSYS2 installation, the following packages must also be installed:
autoconftarmakezipunzipYou can install these packages using the following command line:
pacman -S autoconf tar make zip unzipWSL comes in two flavors, WSL1 and WSL2. These are drastically different under the hood. WSL1 runs the binaries natively by translating Linux kernel calls into Windows kernel calls, while WSL2 runs Linux in a virtual machine. Both solutions have their pros and cons, and you might need to test both before deciding which works best for you. Both WSL1 and WSL2 are supported, but to varying degrees.
To use WSL for building the JDK, you will need Windows 10 version 1809 or later, and you will need to install an Ubuntu guest.
It is possible to build both Windows and Linux binaries from WSL. To
build Windows binaries, you must use a Windows boot JDK (located in a
Windows-accessible directory). To build Linux binaries, you must use a
Linux boot JDK. The default behavior is to build for Windows. To build
for Linux, pass
--build=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu --openjdk-target=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
to configure.
If building Windows binaries, the source code must be located in a Windows- accessible directory. This is because Windows executables (such as Visual Studio and the boot JDK) must be able to access the source code. Also, the drive where the source is stored must be mounted as case-insensitive by changing either /etc/fstab or /etc/wsl.conf in WSL. Individual directories may be corrected using the fsutil tool in case the source was cloned before changing the mount options.
Note that while it's possible to build on WSL, testing is still not fully supported.
Apple is using a quite aggressive scheme of pushing OS updates, and coupling these updates with required updates of Xcode. Unfortunately, this makes it difficult for a project such as the JDK to keep pace with a continuously updated machine running macOS. See the section on Apple Xcode on some strategies to deal with this.
It is recommended that you use at least macOS 13 (Ventura) and Xcode 14, but earlier versions may also work.
The standard macOS environment contains the basic tooling needed to build, but for external libraries a package manager is recommended. The JDK uses homebrew in the examples, but feel free to use whatever manager you want (or none).
It is often not much problem to build the JDK on Linux. The only general advice is to try to use the compilers, external libraries and header files as provided by your distribution.
The basic tooling is provided as part of the core operating system, but you will most likely need to install developer packages.
For apt-based distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, etc), try this:
sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconfFor rpm-based distributions (Fedora, Red Hat, etc), try this:
sudo yum groupinstall "Development Tools"For Alpine Linux, aside from basic tooling, install the GNU versions of some programs:
sudo apk add build-base bash grep zipPlease consult the AIX section of the Supported Build Platforms OpenJDK Build Wiki page for details about which versions of AIX are supported.
Large portions of the JDK consists of native code, that needs to be compiled to be able to run on the target platform. In theory, toolchain and operating system should be independent factors, but in practice there's more or less a one-to-one correlation between target operating system and toolchain.
| Operating system | Supported toolchain |
|---|---|
| Linux | gcc, clang |
| macOS | Apple Xcode (using clang) |
| AIX | IBM Open XL C/C++ |
| Windows | Microsoft Visual Studio |
Please see the individual sections on the toolchains for version recommendations. As a reference, these versions of the toolchains are used, at the time of writing, by Oracle for the daily builds of the JDK. It should be possible to compile the JDK with both older and newer versions, but the closer you stay to this list, the more likely you are to compile successfully without issues.
| Operating system | Toolchain version |
|---|---|
| Linux | gcc 13.2.0 |
| macOS | Apple Xcode 14.3.1 (using clang 14.0.3) |
| Windows | Microsoft Visual Studio 2022 version 17.6.5 |
All compilers are expected to be able to handle the C11 language standard for C, and C++14 for C++.
The minimum accepted version of gcc is 10.0. Older versions will not
be accepted by configure.
The JDK is currently known to compile successfully with gcc version 13.2 or newer.
In general, any version between these two should be usable.
The minimum accepted version of clang is 13. Older versions will not
be accepted by configure.
To use clang instead of gcc on Linux, use
--with-toolchain-type=clang.
The oldest supported version of Xcode is 13.0.
You will need to download Xcode either from the App Store or specific versions can be easily located via the Xcode Releases website.
When updating Xcode, it is advisable to keep an older version for building the JDK. To use a specific version of Xcode you have multiple options:
xcode-select -s before running
configure, e.g.
xcode-select -s /Applications/Xcode13.1.app. The drawback
is that the setting is system wide and you may have to revert it after a
JDK build.--with-xcode-path, e.g.
configure --with-xcode-path=/Applications/Xcode13.1.app
This allows using a specific Xcode version for a JDK build,
independently of the active Xcode version by
xcode-select.If you have recently (inadvertently) updated your OS and/or Xcode version, and the JDK can no longer be built, please see the section on Problems with the Build Environment, and Getting Help to find out if there are any recent, non-merged patches available for this update.
The minimum accepted version is Visual Studio 2019 version 16.8.
(Note that this version is often presented as "MSVC 14.28", and reported
by cl.exe as 19.28.) Older versions will not be accepted by
configure and will not work. The maximum accepted version
of Visual Studio is 2022.
If you have multiple versions of Visual Studio installed,
configure will by default pick the latest. You can request
a specific version to be used by setting
--with-toolchain-version, e.g.
--with-toolchain-version=2022.
If you have Visual Studio installed but configure fails
to detect it, it may be because of spaces in
path.
You must install the US English locale, otherwise the build system might not be able to interact properly with the compiler. You can add additional language packs when installing Visual Studio.
If you have already installed Visual Studio without the US English language pack, you can modify the installation to add this. You can either do this via a GUI like this:
or you can run it on the command line. For this to work, you need to
start cmd.exe using "Run as Administrator". Then execute
the following line: (note that the " characters are essential)
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vs_installer.exe" modify --channelId VisualStudio.16.Release --productId Microsoft.VisualStudio.Product.BuildTools --addProductLang en-us -pVisualStudio.16.Release represent VS 2019, so adjust the
version number accordingly. If you have not installed the
BuildTools, but e.g. Professional, adjust the
product ID accordingly.
The minimum accepted version of Open XL is 17.1.1.4. This is in essence clang 15, and will be treated as such by the OpenJDK build system.
Paradoxically, building the JDK requires a pre-existing JDK. This is called the "boot JDK". The boot JDK does not, however, have to be a JDK built directly from the source code available in the OpenJDK Community. If you are porting the JDK to a new platform, chances are that there already exists another JDK for that platform that is usable as boot JDK.
The rule of thumb is that the boot JDK for building JDK major version N should be a JDK of major version N-1, so for building JDK 18 a JDK 17 would be suitable as boot JDK. However, the JDK should be able to "build itself", so an up-to-date build of the current JDK source is an acceptable alternative. If you are following the N-1 rule, make sure you've got the latest update version, since e.g. JDK 8 GA might not be able to build JDK 9 on all platforms.
Early in the release cycle, version N-1 may not yet have been released. In that case, the preferred boot JDK will be version N-2 until version N-1 is available.
The configure scripts tries to locate a suitable boot
JDK automatically, but due to the lack of standard installation
locations on most platforms, this heuristics has a high likelihood to
fail. If the boot JDK is not automatically detected, or the wrong JDK is
picked, use --with-boot-jdk to point to the JDK to use.
An overview of common ways to download and install prebuilt JDK binaries can be found on https://openjdk.org/install. An alternative is to download the Oracle JDK. Another is Adoptium, which publishes prebuilt binaries for various platforms.
On Linux you can also get a JDK from the Linux distribution. On
apt-based distros (like Debian and Ubuntu),
sudo apt-get install openjdk-<VERSION>-jdk is
typically enough to install a JDK <VERSION>. On rpm-based distros
(like Fedora and Red Hat), try
sudo yum install java-<VERSION>-openjdk-devel.
Different platforms require different external libraries. In general, libraries are not optional - that is, they are either required or not used.
If a required library is not detected by configure, you
need to provide the path to it. There are two forms of the
configure arguments to point to an external library:
--with-<LIB>=<path> or
--with-<LIB>-include=<path to include> --with-<LIB>-lib=<path to lib>.
The first variant is more concise, but require the include files and library files to reside in a default hierarchy under this directory. In most cases, it works fine. As a fallback, the second version allows you to point to the include directory and the lib directory separately.
FreeType2 from The FreeType Project is not required on any platform. The exception is on Unix-based platforms when configuring such that the build artifacts will reference a system installed library, rather than bundling the JDK's own copy.
sudo apt-get install libfreetype6-dev.sudo yum install freetype-devel.sudo apk add freetype-dev.brew install freetype.Use --with-freetype-include=<path> and
--with-freetype-lib=<path> if configure
does not automatically locate the platform FreeType files.
Fontconfig from freedesktop.org Fontconfig is required on all platforms except Windows and macOS.
sudo apt-get install libfontconfig-dev.sudo yum install fontconfig-devel.sudo apk add fontconfig-dev.Use --with-fontconfig-include=<path> and
--with-fontconfig=<path> if configure
does not automatically locate the platform Fontconfig files.
CUPS, Common UNIX Printing System header files are required on all platforms, except Windows. Often these files are provided by your operating system.
sudo apt-get install libcups2-dev.sudo yum install cups-devel.sudo apk add cups-dev.Use --with-cups=<path> if configure
does not properly locate your CUPS files.
Certain X11 libraries and include files are required on Linux.
sudo apt-get install libx11-dev libxext-dev libxrender-dev libxrandr-dev libxtst-dev libxt-dev.sudo yum install libXtst-devel libXt-devel libXrender-devel libXrandr-devel libXi-devel.sudo apk add libx11-dev libxext-dev libxrender-dev libxrandr-dev libxtst-dev libxt-dev.Use --with-x=<path> if configure does
not properly locate your X11 files.
ALSA, Advanced Linux Sound Architecture is required on Linux. At least version 0.9.1 of ALSA is required.
sudo apt-get install libasound2-dev.sudo yum install alsa-lib-devel.sudo apk add alsa-lib-dev.Use --with-alsa=<path> if configure
does not properly locate your ALSA files.
libffi, the Portable Foreign Function Interface Library is required when building the Zero version of Hotspot.
sudo apt-get install libffi-dev.sudo yum install libffi-devel.sudo apk add libffi-dev.Use --with-libffi=<path> if configure
does not properly locate your libffi files.
The JDK build requires Autoconf on all platforms. At least version 2.69 is required.
sudo apt-get install autoconf.sudo yum install autoconf.sudo apk add autoconf.brew install autoconf.<path to Cygwin setup>/setup-x86_64 -q -P autoconf.If configure has problems locating your installation of
autoconf, you can specify it using the AUTOCONF environment
variable, like this:
AUTOCONF=<path to autoconf> configure ...The JDK build requires GNU Make. No other flavors of make are supported.
At least version 3.81 of GNU Make must be used. For distributions
supporting GNU Make 4.0 or above, we strongly recommend it. GNU Make 4.0
contains useful functionality to handle parallel building (supported by
--with-output-sync) and speed and stability
improvements.
Note that configure locates and verifies a properly
functioning version of make and stores the path to this
make binary in the configuration. If you start a build
using make on the command line, you will be using the
version of make found first in your PATH, and not
necessarily the one stored in the configuration. This initial make will
be used as "bootstrap make", and in a second stage, the make located by
configure will be called. Normally, this will present no
issues, but if you have a very old make, or a non-GNU Make
make in your path, this might cause issues.
If you want to override the default make found by
configure, use the MAKE configure variable,
e.g. configure MAKE=/opt/gnu/make.
The JDK build requires GNU Bash. No other shells are supported.
At least version 3.2 of GNU Bash must be used.
In order to build the full docs (see the
--enable-full-docs configure option) Graphviz and Pandoc are required. Any recent versions
should work. For reference, and subject to change, Oracle builds use
Graphviz 9.0.0 and Pandoc 2.19.2.
To build the JDK, you need a "configuration", which consists of a directory where to store the build output, coupled with information about the platform, the specific build machine, and choices that affect how the JDK is built.
The configuration is created by the configure script.
The basic invocation of the configure script looks like
this:
bash configure [options]This will create an output directory containing the configuration and
setup an area for the build result. This directory typically looks like
build/linux-x64-server-release, but the actual name depends
on your specific configuration. (It can also be set directly, see Using Multiple
Configurations). This directory is referred to as
$BUILD in this documentation.
configure will try to figure out what system you are
running on and where all necessary build components are. If you have all
prerequisites for building installed, it should find everything. If it
fails to detect any component automatically, it will exit and inform you
about the problem.
Some command line examples:
Create a 32-bit build for Windows with FreeType2 in
C:\freetype-i586:
bash configure --with-freetype=/cygdrive/c/freetype-i586 --with-target-bits=32Create a debug build with the server JVM and DTrace
enabled:
bash configure --enable-debug --with-jvm-variants=server --enable-dtraceHere follows some of the most common and important
configure argument.
To get up-to-date information on all available
configure argument, please run:
bash configure --help(Note that this help text also include general autoconf options, like
--dvidir, that is not relevant to the JDK. To list only
JDK-specific features, use bash configure --help=short
instead.)
--enable-debug - Set the debug level to
fastdebug (this is a shorthand for
--with-debug-level=fastdebug)--with-debug-level=<level> - Set the debug level,
which can be release, fastdebug,
slowdebug or optimized. Default is
release. optimized is variant of
release with additional Hotspot debug code.--with-native-debug-symbols=<method> - Specify if
and how native debug symbols should be built. Available methods are
none, internal, external,
zipped. Default behavior depends on platform. See Native Debug Symbols for more
details.--with-version-string=<string> - Specify the
version string this build will be identified with.--with-version-<part>=<value> - A group of
options, where <part> can be any of pre,
opt, build, major,
minor, security or patch. Use
these options to modify just the corresponding part of the version
string from the default, or the value provided by
--with-version-string.--with-jvm-variants=<variant>[,<variant>...]
- Build the specified variant (or variants) of Hotspot. Valid variants
are: server, client, minimal,
core, zero, custom. Note that not
all variants are possible to combine in a single build.--enable-jvm-feature-<feature> or
--disable-jvm-feature-<feature> - Include (or
exclude) <feature> as a JVM feature in Hotspot. You
can also specify a list of features to be enabled, separated by space or
comma, as
--with-jvm-features=<feature>[,<feature>...].
If you prefix <feature> with a -, it
will be disabled. These options will modify the default list of features
for the JVM variant(s) you are building. For the custom JVM
variant, the default list is empty. A complete list of valid JVM
features can be found using bash configure --help.--with-target-bits=<bits> - Create a target
binary suitable for running on a <bits> platform. Use
this to create 32-bit output on a 64-bit build platform, instead of
doing a full cross-compile. (This is known as a reduced
build.)On Linux, BSD and AIX, it is possible to override where Java by
default searches for runtime/JNI libraries. This can be useful in
situations where there is a special shared directory for system JNI
libraries. This setting can in turn be overridden at runtime by setting
the java.library.path property.
--with-jni-libpath=<path> - Use the specified
path as a default when searching for runtime libraries.--with-devkit=<path> - Use this devkit for
compilers, tools and resources--with-sysroot=<path> - Use this directory as
sysroot--with-extra-path=<path>[;<path>] - Prepend
these directories to the default path when searching for all kinds of
binaries--with-toolchain-path=<path>[;<path>] -
Prepend these directories when searching for toolchain binaries
(compilers etc)--with-extra-cflags=<flags> - Append these flags
when compiling JDK C files--with-extra-cxxflags=<flags> - Append these
flags when compiling JDK C++ files--with-extra-ldflags=<flags> - Append these flags
when linking JDK libraries--with-boot-jdk=<path> - Set the path to the Boot JDK--with-freetype=<path> - Set the path to FreeType--with-cups=<path> - Set the path to CUPS--with-x=<path> - Set the path to X11--with-alsa=<path> - Set the path to ALSA--with-libffi=<path> - Set the path to libffi--with-jtreg=<path> - Set the path to JTReg. See
Running TestsCertain third-party libraries used by the JDK (libjpeg, giflib,
libpng, lcms and zlib) are included in the JDK repository. The default
behavior of the JDK build is to use the included ("bundled") versions of
libjpeg, giflib, libpng and lcms. For zlib, the system lib (if present)
is used except on Windows and AIX. However the bundled libraries may be
replaced by an external version. To do so, specify system
as the <source> option in these arguments. (The
default is bundled).
--with-libjpeg=<source> - Use the specified
source for libjpeg--with-giflib=<source> - Use the specified source
for giflib--with-libpng=<source> - Use the specified source
for libpng--with-lcms=<source> - Use the specified source
for lcms--with-zlib=<source> - Use the specified source
for zlibOn Linux, it is possible to select either static or dynamic linking of the C++ runtime. The default is static linking, with dynamic linking as fallback if the static library is not found.
--with-stdc++lib=<method> - Use the specified
method (static, dynamic or
default) for linking the C++ runtime.It is possible to control certain aspects of configure
by overriding the value of configure variables, either on
the command line or in the environment.
Normally, this is not recommended. If used
improperly, it can lead to a broken configuration. Unless you're well
versed in the build system, this is hard to use properly. Therefore,
configure will print a warning if this is detected.
However, there are a few configure variables, known as
control variables that are supposed to be overridden on the
command line. These are variables that describe the location of tools
needed by the build, like MAKE or GREP. If any
such variable is specified, configure will use that value
instead of trying to autodetect the tool. For instance,
bash configure MAKE=/opt/gnumake4.0/bin/make.
If a configure argument exists, use that instead, e.g. use
--with-jtreg instead of setting JTREGEXE.
Also note that, despite what autoconf claims, setting
CFLAGS will not accomplish anything. Instead use
--with-extra-cflags (and similar for cxxflags
and ldflags).
When you have a proper configuration, all you need to do to build the
JDK is to run make. (But see the warning at GNU Make about running the correct version of
make.)
When running make without any arguments, the default
target is used, which is the same as running make default
or make jdk. This will build a minimal (or roughly minimal)
set of compiled output (known as an "exploded image") needed for a
developer to actually execute the newly built JDK. The idea is that in
an incremental development fashion, when doing a normal make, you should
only spend time recompiling what's changed (making it purely
incremental) and only do the work that's needed to actually run and test
your code.
The output of the exploded image resides in $BUILD/jdk.
You can test the newly built JDK like this:
$BUILD/jdk/bin/java -version.
Apart from the default target, here are some common make targets:
hotspot - Build all of hotspot (but only hotspot)hotspot-<variant> - Build just the specified jvm
variantimages or product-images - Build the JDK
imagedocs or docs-image - Build the
documentation imagetest-image - Build the test imageall or all-images - Build all images
(product, docs and test)bootcycle-images - Build images twice, second time with
newly built JDK (good for testing)clean - Remove all files generated by make, but not
those generated by configuredist-clean - Remove all files, including
configurationRun make help to get an up-to-date list of important
make targets and make control variables.
It is possible to build just a single module, a single phase, or a
single phase of a single module, by creating make targets according to
these following patterns. A phase can be either of gensrc,
gendata, copy, java,
launchers, or libs. See Using Fine-Grained Make
Targets for more details about this functionality.
<phase> - Build the specified phase and
everything it depends on<module> - Build the specified module and
everything it depends on<module>-<phase> - Compile the specified
phase for the specified module and everything it depends onSimilarly, it is possible to clean just a part of the build by creating make targets according to these patterns:
clean-<outputdir> - Remove the subdir in the
output dir with the nameclean-<phase> - Remove all build results related
to a certain build phaseclean-<module> - Remove all build results related
to a certain moduleclean-<module>-<phase> - Remove all build
results related to a certain module and phaseIt is possible to control make behavior by overriding
the value of make variables, either on the command line or
in the environment.
Normally, this is not recommended. If used
improperly, it can lead to a broken build. Unless you're well versed in
the build system, this is hard to use properly. Therefore,
make will print a warning if this is detected.
However, there are a few make variables, known as
control variables that are supposed to be overridden on the
command line. These make up the "make time" configuration, as opposed to
the "configure time" configuration.
JOBS - Specify the number of jobs to build with. See Build Performance.LOG - Specify the logging level and functionality. See
Checking the Build Log
FileCONF and CONF_NAME - Selecting the
configuration(s) to use. See Using Multiple
ConfigurationsThese make control variables only make sense when running tests. Please see Testing the JDK (html, markdown) for details.
TESTTEST_JOBSTEST_OPTSTEST_VM_OPTSJTREGGTESTMICROThese advanced make control variables can be potentially unsafe. See Hints and Suggestions for Advanced Users and Understanding the Build System for details.
SPECCONF_CHECKCOMPARE_BUILDJDK_FILTERSPEC_FILTERMost of the JDK tests are using the JTReg test framework. Make sure
that your configuration knows where to find your installation of JTReg.
If this is not picked up automatically, use the
--with-jtreg=<path to jtreg home> option to point to
the JTReg framework. Note that this option should point to the JTReg
home, i.e. the top directory, containing lib/jtreg.jar
etc.
The Adoption
Group provides recent builds of jtreg here.
Download the latest .tar.gz file, unpack it, and point
--with-jtreg to the jtreg directory that you
just unpacked.
Building of Hotspot Gtest suite requires the source code of Google
Test framework. The top directory, which contains both
googletest and googlemock directories, should
be specified via --with-gtest. The minimum supported
version of Google Test is 1.14.0, whose source code can be obtained:
v1.14.0 tag of googletest
project:
git clone -b v1.14.0 https://github.com/google/googletestTo execute the most basic tests (tier 1), use:
make test-tier1For more details on how to run tests, please see Testing the JDK (html, markdown).
Modern versions of macOS require applications to be signed and
notarized before distribution. See Apple's documentation for more
background on what this means and how it works. To help support this,
the JDK build can be configured to automatically sign all native
binaries, and the JDK bundle, with all the options needed for successful
notarization, as well as all the entitlements required by the JDK. To
enable hardened signing, use configure parameter
--with-macosx-codesign=hardened and configure the signing
identity you wish to use with
--with-macosx-codesign-identity=<identity>. The
identity refers to a signing identity from Apple that needs to be
preinstalled on the build host.
When not signing for distribution with the hardened option, the JDK
build will still attempt to perform adhoc signing to add
the special entitlement com.apple.security.get-task-allow
to each binary. This entitlement is required to be able to dump core
files from a process. Note that adding this entitlement makes the build
invalid for notarization, so it is only added when signing in
debug mode. To explicitly enable this kind of ad hoc
signing, use configure parameter
--with-macosx-codesign=debug. It will be enabled by default
in most cases.
It's also possible to completely disable any explicit codesign
operations done by the JDK build using the configure parameter
--without-macosx-codesign. The exact behavior then depends
on the architecture. For macOS on x64, it (at least at the time of this
writing) results in completely unsigned binaries that should still work
fine for development and debugging purposes. On aarch64, the Xcode
linker will apply a default "ad hoc" signing, without any entitlements.
Such a build does not allow dumping core files.
The default mode "auto" will try for hardened signing if
the debug level is release and either the default identity
or the specified identity is valid. If hardened isn't possible, then
debug signing is chosen if it works. If nothing works, the
codesign build step is disabled.
Cross-compiling means using one platform (the build platform) to generate output that can ran on another platform (the target platform).
The typical reason for cross-compiling is that the build is performed on a more powerful desktop computer, but the resulting binaries will be able to run on a different, typically low-performing system. Most of the complications that arise when building for embedded is due to this separation of build and target systems.
This requires a more complex setup and build procedure. This section assumes you are familiar with cross-compiling in general, and will only deal with the particularities of cross-compiling the JDK. If you are new to cross-compiling, please see the external links at Wikipedia for a good start on reading materials.
Cross-compiling the JDK requires you to be able to build both for the build platform and for the target platform. The reason for the former is that we need to build and execute tools during the build process, both native tools and Java tools.
If all you want to do is to compile a 32-bit version, for the same
OS, on a 64-bit machine, consider using
--with-target-bits=32 instead of doing a full-blown
cross-compilation. (While this surely is possible, it's a lot more work
and will take much longer to build.)
Setting up a cross-compilation environment by hand is time-consuming and error prone. It is highly recommended that you use one of the automated methods described in Cross compiling the easy way.
You must specify the target platform when cross-compiling.
Doing so will also automatically turn the build into a cross-compiling
mode. The simplest way to do this is to use the
--openjdk-target argument, e.g.
--openjdk-target=arm-linux-gnueabihf. or
--openjdk-target=aarch64-oe-linux. This will automatically
set the --host and --target options for
autoconf, which can otherwise be confusing. (In autoconf terminology,
the "target" is known as "host", and "target" is used for building a
Canadian cross-compiler.)
If --build has not been explicitly passed to configure,
--openjdk-target will autodetect the build platform and
internally set the flag automatically, otherwise the platform that was
explicitly passed to --build will be used instead.
When cross-compiling, make sure you use a boot JDK that runs on the build system, and not on the target system.
To be able to build, we need a "Build JDK", which is a JDK built from the current sources (that is, the same as the end result of the entire build process), but able to run on the build system, and not the target system. (In contrast, the Boot JDK should be from an older release, e.g. JDK 8 when building JDK 9.)
The build process will create a minimal Build JDK for you, as part of
building. To speed up the build, you can use
--with-build-jdk to configure to point to a
pre-built Build JDK. Please note that the build result is unpredictable,
and can possibly break in subtle ways, if the Build JDK does not
exactly match the current sources.
You will need two copies of your toolchain, one which generates output that can run on the target system (the normal, or target, toolchain), and one that generates output that can run on the build system (the build toolchain).
If you are cross-compiling using gcc, it is recommended to use the
gcc standard where you prefix cross-compiling tools with the target
denominator. If you follow this standard, configure is
likely to pick up the toolchain correctly.
The build toolchain will be auto-detected just the same way
the normal build/target toolchain will be
auto-detected when not cross-compiling. If this is not what you want, or
if the auto-detection fails, you can specify a devkit containing the
build toolchain using --with-build-devkit to
configure, or by giving BUILD_CC and
BUILD_CXX arguments.
It is often helpful to locate the cross-compilation tools, headers
and libraries in a separate directory, outside the normal path, and
point out that directory to configure. Do this by setting
the sysroot (--with-sysroot) and appending the directory
when searching for cross-compilations tools
(--with-toolchain-path). As a compact form, you can also
use --with-devkit to point to a single directory, if it is
correctly setup. (See make/autoconf/basics.m4 for
details.)
You will need copies of external native libraries for the target system present on the build machine while building.
Take care not to replace the build system's version of these libraries by mistake, as that can render the build machine unusable.
Make sure that the libraries you point to (ALSA, X11, etc) are for the target platform, not the build platform.
You will need alsa libraries suitable for your target system. In most cases, using Debian's pre-built libraries work fine.
Note that alsa is needed even if you only want to build a headless JDK.
Go to Debian
Package Search, search for the libasound2 and
libasound2-dev packages for your target system,
and download them to /tmp.
Install the libraries into the cross-compilation toolchain. For instance:
cd /tools/gcc-linaro-arm-linux-gnueabihf-raspbian-2012.09-20120921_linux/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libc
dpkg-deb -x /tmp/libasound2_1.0.25-4_armhf.deb .
dpkg-deb -x /tmp/libasound2-dev_1.0.25-4_armhf.deb .If alsa is not properly detected by configure, you
can specify it by --with-alsa.
You will need X11 libraries suitable for your target system. In most cases, using Debian's pre-built libraries work fine.
Note that X11 is needed even if you only want to build a headless JDK.
Go to Debian Package Search, search for the following packages for your target system, and download them to /tmp/target-x11:
libxilibxi-devx11proto-core-devx11proto-input-devx11proto-kb-devx11proto-render-devx11proto-xext-devlibice-devlibxrenderlibxrender-devlibxrandr-devlibsm-devlibxt-devlibx11libx11-devlibxtstlibxtst-devlibxextlibxext-devInstall the libraries into the cross-compilation toolchain. For instance:
cd /tools/gcc-linaro-arm-linux-gnueabihf-raspbian-2012.09-20120921_linux/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libc/usr
mkdir X11R6
cd X11R6
for deb in /tmp/target-x11/*.deb ; do dpkg-deb -x $deb . ; done
mv usr/* .
cd lib
cp arm-linux-gnueabihf/* .You can ignore the following messages, since these libraries are not needed to successfully complete a full JDK build.
cp: cannot stat `arm-linux-gnueabihf/libICE.so': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `arm-linux-gnueabihf/libSM.so': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `arm-linux-gnueabihf/libXt.so': No such file or directoryIf the X11 libraries are not properly detected by
configure, you can point them out by
--with-x.
The build will end up in a directory named like
build/linux-arm-normal-server-release.
Inside this build output directory, the images/jdk will
contain the newly built JDK, for your target system.
Copy these folders to your target system. Then you can run
e.g. images/jdk/bin/java -version.
Setting up a proper cross-compilation environment can be a lot of
work. Fortunately there are ways that more or less automate this
process. Here are two recommended methods, using the "devkits" that can
be generated by the JDK build system, or by using the
debootstrap command in Debian. The former works on all
Linux distributions, the latter only on Debian and derivatives. Both
solution only work for gcc.
The devkit method is regularly used for testing by Oracle, and the debootstrap method is regularly used in GitHub Actions testing.
The JDK build system provides out-of-the box support for creating and
using so called devkits. A devkit is basically a collection
of a cross-compiling toolchain and a sysroot environment which can
easily be used together with the --with-devkit configure
option to cross compile the JDK. On Linux/x86_64, the following
command:
bash configure --with-devkit=<devkit-path> --openjdk-target=ppc64-linux-gnu && makewill configure and build the JDK for Linux/ppc64 assuming that
<devkit-path> points to a Linux/x86_64 to Linux/ppc64
devkit.
Devkits can be created from the make/devkit directory by
executing:
make [ TARGETS="<TARGET_TRIPLET>+" ] [ BASE_OS=<OS> ] [ BASE_OS_VERSION=<VER> ]where TARGETS contains one or more
TARGET_TRIPLETs of the form described in section
3.4 of the GNU Autobook. If no targets are given, a native toolchain
for the current platform will be created. Currently, at least the
following targets are known to work:
| Supported devkit targets |
|---|
| x86_64-linux-gnu |
| aarch64-linux-gnu |
| arm-linux-gnueabihf |
| ppc64-linux-gnu |
| ppc64le-linux-gnu |
| s390x-linux-gnu |
BASE_OS must be one of "OEL6" for Oracle Enterprise
Linux 6 or "Fedora" (if not specified "OEL6" will be the default). If
the base OS is "Fedora" the corresponding Fedora release can be
specified with the help of the BASE_OS_VERSION option (with
"27" as default version). If the build is successful, the new devkits
can be found in the build/devkit/result subdirectory:
cd make/devkit
make TARGETS="ppc64le-linux-gnu aarch64-linux-gnu" BASE_OS=Fedora BASE_OS_VERSION=21
ls -1 ../../build/devkit/result/
x86_64-linux-gnu-to-aarch64-linux-gnu
x86_64-linux-gnu-to-ppc64le-linux-gnuNotice that devkits are not only useful for targeting different build platforms. Because they contain the full build dependencies for a system (i.e. compiler and root file system), they can easily be used to build well-known, reliable and reproducible build environments. You can for example create and use a devkit with GCC 7.3 and a Fedora 12 sysroot environment (with glibc 2.11) on Ubuntu 14.04 (which doesn't have GCC 7.3 by default) to produce JDK binaries which will run on all Linux systems with runtime libraries newer than the ones from Fedora 12 (e.g. Ubuntu 16.04, SLES 11 or RHEL 6).
On Debian (or a derivative like Ubuntu), you can create sysroots for
foreign architectures with tools provided by the OS. You can use
debootstrap to create a target system chroot
directory, which would have the native libraries and headers specific to
that target system. After that, you can use the cross-compiler
on the build system, pointing into the chroot to get the build
dependencies right. This allows building for foreign architectures with
native compilation speed.
For example, cross-compiling to AArch64 from x86_64 could be done like this:
Install cross-compiler on the build system:
apt install g++-aarch64-linux-gnu gcc-aarch64-linux-gnuCreate chroot on the build system, configuring it for target system:
sudo debootstrap \
--arch=arm64 \
--verbose \
--include=fakeroot,symlinks,build-essential,libx11-dev,libxext-dev,libxrender-dev,libxrandr-dev,libxtst-dev,libxt-dev,libcups2-dev,libfontconfig1-dev,libasound2-dev,libfreetype6-dev,libpng-dev,libffi-dev \
--resolve-deps \
buster \
~/sysroot-arm64 \
https://httpredir.debian.org/debian/To create an Ubuntu-based chroot:
sudo debootstrap \
--arch=arm64 \
--verbose \
--components=main,universe \
--include=fakeroot,symlinks,build-essential,libx11-dev,libxext-dev,libxrender-dev,libxrandr-dev,libxtst-dev,libxt-dev,libcups2-dev,libfontconfig1-dev,libasound2-dev,libfreetype6-dev,libpng-dev,libffi-dev \
--resolve-deps \
jammy \
~/sysroot-arm64 \
http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/Note that symlinks is in the universe
repository.
Make sure the symlinks inside the newly created chroot point to proper locations:
sudo chroot ~/sysroot-arm64 symlinks -cr .Configure and build with newly created chroot as sysroot/toolchain-path:
sh ./configure \
--openjdk-target=aarch64-linux-gnu \
--with-sysroot=~/sysroot-arm64
make images
ls build/linux-aarch64-server-release/The build does not create new files in that chroot, so it can be reused for multiple builds without additional cleanup.
The build system should automatically detect the toolchain paths and dependencies, but sometimes it might require a little nudge with:
Native compilers: override CC or CXX
for ./configure
Freetype lib location: override --with-freetype-lib,
for example ${sysroot}/usr/lib/${target}/
Freetype includes location: override
--with-freetype-include for example
${sysroot}/usr/include/freetype2/
X11 libraries location: override --x-libraries, for
example ${sysroot}/usr/lib/${target}/
Architectures that are known to successfully cross-compile like this are:
| Target | Debian tree | Debian arch | --openjdk-target=... |
--with-jvm-variants=... |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| x86 | buster | i386 | i386-linux-gnu | (all) |
| arm | buster | armhf | arm-linux-gnueabihf | (all) |
| aarch64 | buster | arm64 | aarch64-linux-gnu | (all) |
| ppc64le | buster | ppc64el | powerpc64le-linux-gnu | (all) |
| s390x | buster | s390x | s390x-linux-gnu | (all) |
| mipsle | buster | mipsel | mipsel-linux-gnu | zero |
| mips64le | buster | mips64el | mips64el-linux-gnueabi64 | zero |
| armel | buster | arm | arm-linux-gnueabi | zero |
| ppc | sid | powerpc | powerpc-linux-gnu | zero |
| ppc64be | sid | ppc64 | powerpc64-linux-gnu | (all) |
| m68k | sid | m68k | m68k-linux-gnu | zero |
| alpha | sid | alpha | alpha-linux-gnu | zero |
| sh4 | sid | sh4 | sh4-linux-gnu | zero |
| riscv64 | sid | riscv64 | riscv64-linux-gnu | (all) |
A common cross-compilation target is the ARM CPU. When building for
ARM, it is recommended to set the ABI profile. A number of pre-defined
ABI profiles are available using --with-abi-profile:
arm-vfp-sflt, arm-vfp-hflt,
arm-sflt, armv5-vfp-sflt and
armv6-vfp-hflt. Note that soft-float ABIs are no longer
properly supported by the JDK.
The RISC-V community provides a basic GNU compiler
toolchain, but the external
libraries required by the JDK complicate the building process. The
placeholder <toolchain-installed-path> shown below is
the path where you want to install the toolchain.
Install the RISC-V GNU compiler toolchain:
git clone --recursive https://github.com/riscv-collab/riscv-gnu-toolchain
cd riscv-gnu-toolchain
./configure --prefix=<toolchain-installed-path>
make linux
export PATH=<toolchain-installed-path>/bin:$PATHCross-compile all the required libraries:
# An example for libffi
git clone https://github.com/libffi/libffi
cd libffi
./configure --host=riscv64-unknown-linux-gnu --prefix=<toolchain-installed-path>/sysroot/usr
make
make installConfigure and build the JDK:
bash configure \
--with-boot-jdk=$BOOT_JDK \
--openjdk-target=riscv64-linux-gnu \
--with-sysroot=<toolchain-installed-path>/sysroot \
--with-toolchain-path=<toolchain-installed-path>/bin \
--with-extra-path=<toolchain-installed-path>/bin
make imagesJust like it's possible to cross-compile for a different CPU, it's
possible to cross-compile for musl libc on a glibc-based
build system. A devkit suitable for most target CPU
architectures can be obtained from musl.cc. After installing the required
packages in the sysroot, configure the build with
--openjdk-target:
sh ./configure --with-jvm-variants=server \
--with-boot-jdk=$BOOT_JDK \
--with-build-jdk=$BUILD_JDK \
--openjdk-target=x86_64-unknown-linux-musl \
--with-devkit=$DEVKIT \
--with-sysroot=$SYSROOTand run make normally.
Building the JDK requires a lot of horsepower. Some of the build
tools can be adjusted to utilize more or less of resources such as
parallel threads and memory. The configure script analyzes
your system and selects reasonable values for such options based on your
hardware. If you encounter resource problems, such as out of memory
conditions, you can modify the detected values with:
--with-num-cores -- number of cores in the build
system, e.g. --with-num-cores=8.
--with-memory-size -- memory (in MB) available in
the build system, e.g. --with-memory-size=1024
You can also specify directly the number of build jobs to use with
--with-jobs=N to configure, or
JOBS=N to make. Do not use the -j
flag to make. In most cases it will be ignored by the
makefiles, but it can cause problems for some make targets.
It might also be necessary to specify the JVM arguments passed to the
Boot JDK, using e.g. --with-boot-jdk-jvmargs="-Xmx8G".
Doing so will override the default JVM arguments passed to the Boot
JDK.
At the end of a successful execution of configure, you
will get a performance summary, indicating how well the build will
perform. Here you will also get performance hints. If you want to build
fast, pay attention to those!
If you want to tweak build performance, run with
make LOG=info to get a build time summary at the end of the
build process.
If you are using network shares, e.g. via NFS, for your source code,
make sure the build directory is situated on local disk (e.g. by
ln -s /localdisk/jdk-build $JDK-SHARE/build). The
performance penalty is extremely high for building on a network share;
close to unusable.
Also, make sure that your build tools (including Boot JDK and toolchain) is located on a local disk and not a network share.
As has been stressed elsewhere, do use SSD for source code and build directory, as well as (if possible) the build tools.
The use of virus checking software, especially on Windows, can significantly slow down building of the JDK. If possible, turn off such software, or exclude the directory containing the JDK source code from on-the-fly checking.
The JDK build supports building with ccache when using gcc or clang.
Using ccache can radically speed up compilation of native code if you
often rebuild the same sources. Your mileage may vary however, so we
recommend evaluating it for yourself. To enable it, make sure it's on
the path and configure with --enable-ccache.
By default, the Hotspot build uses pre-compiled headers (PCH) on the toolchains were it is properly supported (clang, gcc, and Visual Studio). Normally, this speeds up the build process, but in some circumstances, it can actually slow things down.
You can experiment by disabling pre-compiled headers using
--disable-precompiled-headers.
icecc/icecream is a simple way to setup a distributed compiler network. If you have multiple machines available for building the JDK, you can drastically cut individual build times by utilizing it.
To use, setup an icecc network, and install icecc on the build
machine. Then run configure using
--enable-icecc.
To speed up compilation of Java code, especially during incremental
compilations, the javac server is automatically enabled in the
configuration step by default. To explicitly enable or disable the javac
server, use either --enable-javac-server or
--disable-javac-server.
Selecting the proper target to build can have dramatic impact on
build time. For normal usage, jdk or the default target is
just fine. You only need to build images for shipping, or
if your tests require it.
See also Using Fine-Grained Make Targets on how to build an even smaller subset of the product.
If your build fails, it can sometimes be difficult to pinpoint the problem or find a proper solution.
When a build fails, it can be hard to pinpoint the actual cause of the error. In a typical build process, different parts of the product build in parallel, with the output interlaced.
To help you, the build system will print a failure summary at the end. It looks like this:
ERROR: Build failed for target 'hotspot' in configuration 'linux-x64' (exit code 2)
=== Output from failing command(s) repeated here ===
* For target hotspot_variant-server_libjvm_objs_psMemoryPool.o:
/src/jdk/hotspot/src/share/vm/services/psMemoryPool.cpp:1:1: error: 'failhere' does not name a type
... (rest of output omitted)
* All command lines available in /src/jdk/build/linux-x64/make-support/failure-logs.
=== End of repeated output ===
=== Make failed targets repeated here ===
lib/CompileJvm.gmk:207: recipe for target '/src/jdk/build/linux-x64/hotspot/variant-server/libjvm/objs/psMemoryPool.o' failed
make/Main.gmk:263: recipe for target 'hotspot-server-libs' failed
=== End of repeated output ===
HELP: Try searching the build log for the name of the first failed target.
HELP: Run 'make doctor' to diagnose build problems.Let's break it down! First, the selected configuration, and the top-level target you entered on the command line that caused the failure is printed.
Then, between the
Output from failing command(s) repeated here and
End of repeated output the first lines of output (stdout
and stderr) from the actual failing command is repeated. In most cases,
this is the error message that caused the build to fail. If multiple
commands were failing (this can happen in a parallel build), output from
all failed commands will be printed here.
The path to the failure-logs directory is printed. In
this file you will find a <target>.log file that
contains the output from this command in its entirety, and also a
<target>.cmd, which contain the complete command line
used for running this command. You can re-run the failing command by
executing . <path to failure-logs>/<target>.cmd
in your shell.
Another way to trace the failure is to follow the chain of make
targets, from top-level targets to individual file targets. Between
Make failed targets repeated here and
End of repeated output the output from make showing this
chain is repeated. The first failed recipe will typically contain the
full path to the file in question that failed to compile. Following
lines will show a trace of make targets why we ended up trying to
compile that file.
Finally, some hints are given on how to locate the error in the
complete log. In this example, we would try searching the log file for
"psMemoryPool.o". Another way to quickly locate make errors
in the log is to search for "] Error" or
"***".
Note that the build failure summary will only help you if the issue
was a compilation failure or similar. If the problem is more esoteric,
or is due to errors in the build machinery, you will likely get empty
output logs, and No indication of failed target found
instead of the make target chain.
The output (stdout and stderr) from the latest build is always stored
in $BUILD/build.log. The previous build log is stored as
build.log.old. This means that it is not necessary to
redirect the build output yourself if you want to process it.
You can increase the verbosity of the log file, by the
LOG control variable to make. If you want to
see the command lines used in compilations, use
LOG=cmdlines. To increase the general verbosity, use
LOG=info, LOG=debug or LOG=trace.
Both of these can be combined with cmdlines, e.g.
LOG=info,cmdlines. The debug log level will
show most shell commands executed by make, and trace will
show all. Beware that both these log levels will produce a massive build
log!
Most of the time, the build will fail due to incorrect changes in the source code.
Sometimes the build can fail with no apparent changes that have caused the failure. If this is the first time you are building the JDK on this particular computer, and the build fails, the problem is likely with your build environment. But even if you have previously built the JDK with success, and it now fails, your build environment might have changed (perhaps due to OS upgrades or similar). But most likely, such failures are due to problems with the incremental rebuild.
The build system comes with a built-in problem diagnosing system. If
you encounter unexpected build failures, you are highly encouraged to
run make doctor. The build system will check for common
sources of build problems and suggest suitable actions to take to fix
those problems.
These checks are not done during normal build time since they are either too expensive performance-wise to perform, or since they are not conclusive and just an indication about a potential problem.
The output from make doctor can look like this:
"make doctor" will help you analyze your build environment. It can highlight
certain well-known problems, but it can never find all possible errors.
* Verifying that configure has picked up git...
* Checking for warnings from configure...
---
The following warnings were produced. Repeated here for convenience:
WARNING: pandoc is version 3.1.9, not the recommended version 2.19.2
---
! Inspect the warnings, fix any problems, and re-run configure
* Checking for left-over core files...
Found these potential core files. They might interfere with the build process:
---
src/hotspot/core.1337
---
! Remove left-over core files
* Checking for untracked files with illegal names...
* If all else fails, try removing the entire build directory and re-creating
the same configuration using:
---
configure_command_line=$(make print-configuration)
make dist-clean
bash configure $configure_command_line
---
* The build README (doc/building.md) is a great source of information,
especially the chapter "Fixing Unexpected Build Failures". Check it out!
* If you still need assistance please contact build-dev@openjdk.org.Make sure your configuration is correct. Re-run
configure, and look for any warnings. Warnings that appear
in the middle of the configure output is also repeated at
the end, after the summary. The entire log is stored in
$BUILD/configure.log.
Verify that the summary at the end looks correct. Are you indeed using the Boot JDK and native toolchain that you expect?
By default, the JDK has a strict approach where warnings from the
compiler is considered errors which fail the build. For very new or very
old compiler versions, this can trigger new classes of warnings, which
thus fails the build. Run configure with
--disable-warnings-as-errors to turn of this behavior. (The
warnings will still show, but not make the build fail.)
Incremental rebuilds mean that when you modify part of the product, only the affected parts get rebuilt. While this works great in most cases, and significantly speed up the development process, from time to time complex interdependencies will result in an incorrect build result. This is the most common cause for unexpected build problems.
Here are a suggested list of things to try if you are having unexpected build problems. Each step requires more time than the one before, so try them in order. Most issues will be solved at step 1 or 2.
Make sure your repository is up-to-date
Run git pull origin master to make sure you have the
latest changes.
Clean build results
The simplest way to fix incremental rebuild issues is to run
make clean. This will remove all build results, but not the
configuration or any build system support artifacts. In most cases, this
will solve build errors resulting from incremental build
mismatches.
Completely clean the build directory.
If this does not work, the next step is to run
make dist-clean, or removing the build output directory
($BUILD). This will clean all generated output, including
your configuration. You will need to re-run configure after
this step. A good idea is to run make print-configuration
before running make dist-clean, as this will print your
current configure command line. Here's a way to do
this:
make print-configuration > current-configuration
make dist-clean
bash configure $(cat current-configuration)
makeRe-clone the Git repository
Sometimes the Git repository gets in a state that causes the product
to be un-buildable. In such a case, the simplest solution is often the
"sledgehammer approach": delete the entire repository, and re-clone it.
If you have local changes, save them first to a different location using
git format-patch.
If you get an error message like this:
File 'xxx' has modification time in the future.
Clock skew detected. Your build may be incomplete.then the clock on your build machine is out of sync with the timestamps on the source files. Other errors, apparently unrelated but in fact caused by the clock skew, can occur along with the clock skew warnings. These secondary errors may tend to obscure the fact that the true root cause of the problem is an out-of-sync clock.
If you see these warnings, reset the clock on the build machine, run
make clean and restart the build.
On Windows, you might get error messages like this:
fatal error - couldn't allocate heap
cannot create ... Permission denied
spawn failedThis can be a sign of a Cygwin problem. See the information about solving problems in the Cygwin section. Rebooting the computer might help temporarily.
On Windows, when configuring, fixpath.sh may report that
some directory names have spaces. Usually, it assumes those directories
have short
paths. You can run fsutil file setshortname in
cmd on directories to assign arbitrary short paths so
configure can access them. If the result says "Access
denied", it may be that there are processes running in that directory;
in this case, you can reboot Windows in safe mode and run the command on
those directories again.
The only directories required to have short paths are
Microsoft Visual Studio and Windows Kits; the
rest of the "contains space" warnings from configure, such
as IntelliJ IDEA, can be ignored. You can choose any short
name; once it is set, configure's tools like
cygpath can convert the directory with spaces to your
chosen short name and pass it to the build system.
If none of the suggestions in this document helps you, or if you find what you believe is a bug in the build system, please contact the Build Group by sending a mail to build-dev@openjdk.org. Please include the relevant parts of the configure and/or build log.
If you need general help or advice about developing for the JDK, you can also contact the Adoption Group. See the section on Contributing to OpenJDK for more information.
Build reproducibility is the property of getting exactly the same bits out when building, every time, independent on who builds the product, or where. This is for many reasons a harder goal than it initially appears, but it is an important goal, for security reasons and others. Please see Reproducible Builds for more information about the background and reasons for reproducible builds.
Currently, it is not possible to build the JDK fully reproducibly, but getting there is an ongoing effort.
An absolute prerequisite for building reproducible is to specify a
fixed build time, since time stamps are embedded in many file formats.
This is done by setting the SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH environment
variable, which is an industry
standard, that many tools, such as gcc, recognize, and use in place
of the current time when generating output.
To generate reproducible builds, you must set
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH before running configure.
The value in SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH will be stored in the
configuration, and used by make. Setting
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH before running make will
have no effect on the build.
You must also make sure your build does not rely on
configure's default ad hoc version strings. Default ad hoc
version strings OPT segment include user name and source
directory. You can either override just the OPT segment
using --with-version-opt=<any fixed string>, or you
can specify the entire version string using
--with-version-string=<your version>.
This is a typical example of how to build the JDK in a reproducible way:
export SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH=946684800
bash configure --with-version-opt=adhoc
makeNote that regardless of whether you specify a source date for
configure or not, the JDK build system will set
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH for all build tools when building. If
--with-source-date has the value current
(which is the default unless SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH is found by
in the environment by configure), the source date value
will be determined at configure time.
There are several aspects of reproducible builds that can be
individually adjusted by configure arguments. If any of
these are given, they will override the value derived from
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH. These arguments are:
--with-source-dateThis option controls how the JDK build sets
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH when building. It can be set to a value
describing a date, either an epoch based timestamp as an integer, or a
valid ISO-8601 date.
It can also be set to one of the special values current,
updated or version. current means
that the time of running configure will be used.
version will use the nominal release date for the current
JDK version. updated, which means that
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH will be set to the current time each time
you are running make. All choices, except for
updated, will set a fixed value for the source date
timestamp.
When SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH is set, the default value for
--with-source-date will be the value given by
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH. Otherwise, the default value is
current.
--with-hotspot-build-timeThis option controls the build time string that will be included in
the hotspot library (libjvm.so or jvm.dll). If
the source date is fixed (e.g. by setting
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH), the default value for
--with-hotspot-build-time will be an ISO 8601
representation of that time stamp. Otherwise the default value will be
the current time when building hotspot.
--with-copyright-yearThis option controls the copyright year in some generated text files.
When the source date is fixed (e.g. by setting
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH), the default value for
--with-copyright-year will be the year of that time stamp.
Otherwise the default is the current year at the time of running
configure. This can be overridden by
--with-copyright-year=<year>.
--enable-reproducible-buildThis option controls additional behavior needed to make the build
reproducible. When the source date is fixed (e.g. by setting
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH), this flag will be turned on by default.
Otherwise, the value is determined by heuristics. If it is explicitly
turned off, the build might not be reproducible.
The configure and make commands try to play
nice with bash command-line completion (using <tab>
or <tab><tab>). To use this functionality, make
sure you enable completion in your ~/.bashrc (see
instructions for bash in your operating system).
Make completion will work out of the box, and will complete valid
make targets. For instance, typing make jdk-i<tab>
will complete to make jdk-image.
The configure script can get completion for options, but
for this to work you need to help bash on the way. The
standard way of running the script, bash configure, will
not be understood by bash completion. You need configure to
be the command to run. One way to achieve this is to add a simple helper
script to your path:
cat << EOT > /tmp/configure
#!/bin/bash
if [ \$(pwd) = \$(cd \$(dirname \$0); pwd) ] ; then
echo >&2 "Abort: Trying to call configure helper recursively"
exit 1
fi
bash \$PWD/configure "\$@"
EOT
chmod +x /tmp/configure
sudo mv /tmp/configure /usr/local/binNow configure --en<tab>-dt<tab> will result
in configure --enable-dtrace.
You can have multiple configurations for a single source repository.
When you create a new configuration, run
configure --with-conf-name=<name> to create a
configuration with the name <name>. Alternatively,
you can create a directory under build and run
configure from there, e.g.
mkdir build/<name> && cd build/<name> && bash ../../configure.
Then you can build that configuration using
make CONF=<selector>, where
<selector> is interpreted as follows:
<selector> exacly matches the name of a
configuration, this and only this configuration will be selected.<selector> matches (i.e. is a substring of)
the names of several configurations, then all these configurations will
be selected.<selector> is empty (i.e. CONF=),
then all configurations will be selected.<selector> begins with !, then
all configurations not matching the string following
! will be selected.A more specialized version, CONF_NAME=<name> also
exists, which will only match if the given <name>
exactly matches a single configuration.
Alternatively, you can execute make in the configuration
directory, e.g. cd build/<name> && make.
make CONF_NAME=<name> or
If you update the repository and part of the configure script has
changed, the build system will force you to re-run
configure.
Most of the time, you will be fine by running configure
again with the same arguments as the last time, which can easily be
performed by make reconfigure. To simplify this, you can
use the CONF_CHECK make control variable, either as
make CONF_CHECK=auto, or by setting an environment
variable. For instance, if you add export CONF_CHECK=auto
to your .bashrc file, make will always run
reconfigure automatically whenever the configure script has
changed.
You can also use CONF_CHECK=ignore to skip the check for
a needed configure update. This might speed up the build, but comes at
the risk of an incorrect build result. This is only recommended if you
know what you're doing.
From time to time, you will also need to modify the command line to
configure due to changes. Use
make print-configuration to show the command line used for
your current configuration.
The default behavior for make is to create consistent and correct output, at the expense of build speed, if necessary.
If you are prepared to take some risk of an incorrect build, and know enough of the system to understand how things build and interact, you can speed up the build process considerably by instructing make to only build a portion of the product.
The safe way to use fine-grained make targets is to use the module
specific make targets. All source code in the JDK is organized so it
belongs to a module, e.g. java.base or
jdk.jdwp.agent. You can build only a specific module, by
giving it as make target: make jdk.jdwp.agent. If the
specified module depends on other modules (e.g. java.base),
those modules will be built first.
You can also specify a set of modules, just as you can always specify
a set of make targets:
make jdk.crypto.cryptoki jdk.crypto.ec jdk.crypto.mscapi
The build process for each module is divided into separate phases. Not all modules need all phases. Which are needed depends on what kind of source code and other artifact the module consists of. The phases are:
gensrc (Generate source code to compile)gendata (Generate non-source code artifacts)copy (Copy resource artifacts)java (Compile Java code)launchers (Compile native executables)libs (Compile native libraries)You can build only a single phase for a module by using the notation
$MODULE-$PHASE. For instance, to build the
gensrc phase for java.base, use
make java.base-gensrc.
Note that some phases may depend on others, e.g. java
depends on gensrc (if present). Make will build all needed
prerequisites before building the requested phase.
When using an iterative development style with frequent quick rebuilds, the dependency check made by make can take up a significant portion of the time spent on the rebuild. In such cases, it can be useful to bypass the dependency check in make.
Note that if used incorrectly, this method can lead to a broken build!
To achieve this, append -only to the build target. For
instance, make jdk.jdwp.agent-java-only will only
build the java phase of the jdk.jdwp.agent
module. If the required dependencies are not present, the build can
fail. On the other hand, the execution time measures in
milliseconds.
A useful pattern is to build the first time normally (e.g.
make jdk.jdwp.agent) and then on subsequent builds, use the
-only make target.
In older versions of the JDK, inefficiencies when building
java.base (by far the largest module in the JDK) could be
overcome by using the make control variable JDK_FILTER.
This is not needed anymore for performance reasons, but the
functionality is still present.
To use this, set the make control variable JDK_FILTER to
specify a pattern that will be used to limit the set of files being
recompiled. For instance,
make java.base JDK_FILTER=javax/crypto will limit the
compilation to files in the javax.crypto package.
This section will give you a more technical description on the details of the build system.
The build system expects to find one or more configuration. These are
technically defined by the spec.gmk in a subdirectory to
the build subdirectory. The spec.gmk file is
generated by configure, and contains in principle the
configuration (directly or by files included by
spec.gmk).
You can, in fact, select a configuration to build by pointing to the
spec.gmk file with the SPEC make control
variable, e.g. make SPEC=$BUILD/spec.gmk. While this is not
the recommended way to call make as a user, it is what is
used under the hood by the build system.
The build output for a configuration will end up in
build/<configuration name>, which we refer to as
$BUILD in this document. The $BUILD directory
contains the following important directories:
buildtools/
configure-support/
hotspot/
images/
jdk/
make-support/
support/
test-results/
test-support/This is what they are used for:
images: This is the directory were the output of the
*-image make targets end up. For instance,
make jdk-image ends up in images/jdk.
jdk: This is the "exploded image". After
make jdk, you will be able to launch the newly built JDK by
running $BUILD/jdk/bin/java.
test-results: This directory contains the results
from running tests.
support: This is an area for intermediate files
needed during the build, e.g. generated source code, object files and
class files. Some noteworthy directories in support is
gensrc, which contains the generated source code, and the
modules_* directories, which contains the files in a
per-module hierarchy that will later be collapsed into the
jdk directory of the exploded image.
buildtools: This is an area for tools compiled for
the build platform that are used during the rest of the build.
hotspot: This is an area for intermediate files
needed when building hotspot.
configure-support, make-support and
test-support: These directories contain files that are
needed by the build system for configure, make
and for running tests.
Windows path typically look like C:\User\foo, while Unix
paths look like /home/foo. Tools with roots from Unix often
experience issues related to this mismatch when running on Windows.
In the JDK build, we always use Unix paths internally, and only just before calling a tool that does not understand Unix paths do we convert them to Windows paths.
This conversion is done by the fixpath.sh tool, which is
a small wrapper that modifies Unix-style paths to Windows-style paths.
The fixpath tool is called with the first argument as a sub-command
describing the action it should take. Available actions are
import, exec, print and
verify.
import is called at configure time to convert a path
given by the user and that might be in Windows format to Unix path,
which is used internally.
exec is called at build time. This will take the
command line provided, complete with arguments, converting the paths in
the command line, and then execute the command.
print is called at build time, in the rare cases
where a path might be needed in Windows format, but not as an argument
to a command to execute.
verify is called at configure time to check that a
path is correctly specified and reachable by Windows.
The fixpath tool uses a somewhat complex heuristic to infer which part of the command line arguments refer to paths, and converts those. In some circumstances, these heuristics can fail.
If you are having strange build issues related to path conversion, you might need to debug how fixpath treats your paths. Here are some ways to do this.
One way is to define the environment variable
DEBUG_FIXPATH, e.g. DEBUG_FIXPATH=1 make jdk.
When set, any call to fixpath exec will result in an output
like this:
fixpath: debug: input: ls /mnt/c/windows
fixpath: debug: output: ls c:\windowsYou can also call fixpath yourself manually with your paths to see
how they are translated. For this, use print and
import. For example:
$ bash make/scripts/fixpath.sh print /mnt/c/windows
c:\windows
$ bash make/scripts/fixpath.sh import "c:\\windows"
/mnt/c/windowsRemember that backslash is used as an escape character in the shell, and needs to be doubled when used in Windows paths.
Native libraries and executables can have debug symbol (and other debug information) associated with them. How this works is very much platform dependent, but a common problem is that debug symbol information takes a lot of disk space, but is rarely needed by the end user.
The JDK supports different methods on how to handle debug symbols.
The method used is selected by --with-native-debug-symbols,
and available methods are none, internal,
external, zipped.
none means that no debug symbols will be generated
during the build.
internal means that debug symbols will be generated
during the build, and they will be stored in the generated
binary.
external means that debug symbols will be generated
during the build, and after the compilation, they will be moved into a
separate .debuginfo file. (This was previously known as
FDS, Full Debug Symbols).
zipped is like external, but the
.debuginfo file will also be zipped into a .diz
file.
When building for distribution, zipped is a good
solution. Binaries built with internal is suitable for use
by developers, since they facilitate debugging, but should be stripped
before distributed to end users.
The configure script is using the autoconf framework,
but it has grown to deviate quite a lot from a traditional autoconf
configure script.
The configure script in the top level directory of the
JDK is just a thin wrapper that calls
make/autoconf/configure. This in turn will run
autoconf to create the runnable (generated) configure
script, as .build/generated-configure.sh. Apart from being
responsible for the generation of the runnable script, the
configure script also provides functionality that is not
easily expressed in the normal Autoconf framework. As part of this
functionality, the generated script is called.
The build system will detect if the Autoconf source files have
changed, and will trigger a regeneration of the generated script if
needed. You can also manually request such an update by
bash configure autogen.
This section contains a few remarks about how to develop for the build system itself. It is not relevant if you are only making changes in the product source code.
While technically using make, the make source files of
the JDK does not resemble most other Makefiles. Instead of listing
specific targets and actions (perhaps using patterns), the basic modus
operandi is to call a high-level function (or properly, macro) from the
API in make/common. For instance, to compile all classes in
the jdk.internal.foo package in the jdk.foo
module, a call like this would be made:
$(eval $(call SetupJavaCompilation, BUILD_FOO_CLASSES, \
SETUP := GENERATE_OLDBYTECODE, \
SRC := $(TOPDIR)/src/jkd.foo/share/classes, \
INCLUDES := jdk/internal/foo, \
BIN := $(SUPPORT_OUTPUTDIR)/foo_classes, \
))By encapsulating and expressing the high-level knowledge of what should be done, rather than how it should be done (as is normal in Makefiles), we can build a much more powerful and flexible build system.
Correct dependency tracking is paramount. Sloppy dependency tracking will lead to improper parallelization, or worse, race conditions.
To test for/debug race conditions, try running
make JOBS=1 and make JOBS=100 and see if it
makes any difference. (It shouldn't).
To compare the output of two different builds and see if, and how,
they differ, run $BUILD1/compare.sh -o $BUILD2, where
$BUILD1 and $BUILD2 are the two builds you
want to compare.
To automatically build two consecutive versions and compare them, use
COMPARE_BUILD. The value of COMPARE_BUILD is a
set of variable=value assignments, like this:
make COMPARE_BUILD=CONF=--enable-new-hotspot-feature:MAKE=hotspotSee make/InitSupport.gmk for details on how to use
COMPARE_BUILD.
To analyze build performance, run with LOG=trace and
check $BUILD/build-trace-time.log. Use JOBS=1
to avoid parallelism.
Please check that you adhere to the Code Conventions for the Build System before submitting patches.
So, now you've built your JDK, and made your first patch, and want to contribute it back to the OpenJDK Community.
First of all: Thank you! We gladly welcome your contribution. However, please bear in mind that the JDK is a massive project, and we must ask you to follow our rules and guidelines to be able to accept your contribution.
The official place to start is the OpenJDK Developers’ Guide.
If you want to contribute changes to this document, edit
doc/building.md and then run
make update-build-docs to generate the same changes in
doc/building.html.