Adopt OpenJDK & Java community: how can you help Java !

Introduction

I want to take the opportunity to show what we have been doing in last year and also what we have done so far as members of the community. Unlike other years I have decided to keep this post less technical compare to the past years and compared to the other posts on Java Advent this year.

This year marks the fourth year since the first OpenJDK hackday was held in London (supported by LJC and its members) and also when the Adopt OpenJDK program was started. Four years is a small number on the face of 20 years of Java, same goes to the size of the Adopt OpenJDK community which forms a small part of the Java community (9+ million users). Although the post is non-technical in nature, the message herein is fairly important for the future growth and progress of our community and the next generation developers.

Creations of the community

Over the many months a number of members of our community contributed and passed on their good work to us. In no specific order I have enlisted these picking them from memory. I know there are more to name and you can help us by sharing those with us (we will enlist them here).  So here are some of those that we can talk about and be proud of, and thank those who were involved:

• Getting Started page – created to enabled two way communication with the members of the community, these include a mailing list, an IRC channel, a weekly newsletter, a twitter handle, among other social media channels and collaboration tools.
• Adopt OpenJDK project: jitwatch – a great tool created by Chris Newland, its one of its kind, ever growing with features and helping developers fine-tune the performance of your Java/JVM applications running on the JVM.
• Adopt OpenJDK: GSK – a community effort gathering knowledge and experience from hackday attendees and OpenJDK developers on how to go about with OpenJDK from building it to creating your own version of the JDK. Many JUG members have been involved in the process, and this is now a e-book available in many languages (5 languages + 2 to 3 more languages in progress).
• Adopt OpenJDK vagrant scripts – a collection of vagrant scripts initially created by John Patrick from the LJC, later improved by the community members by adding more scripts and refactoring existing ones. Theses scripts help build OpenJDK projects in a virtualised container i.e. VirtualBox, making building, and testing OpenJDK and also running and testing Java/JVM applications much easier, reliable and in an isolated environment.
• Adopt OpenJDK docker scripts – a collection of docker scripts created with the help of the community, this is now also receiving contributions from a number of members like Richard Kolb (SA JUG). Just like the vagrant scripts mentioned above, the docker scripts have similar goals, and need your DevOps foo!
• Adopt OpenJDK project: mjprof – mjprof is a Monadic jstack analysis tool set. It is a fancy way to say it analyzes jstack output using a series of simple composable building blocks (monads). Many thanks to Haim Yadid for donating it to the community.
• Adopt OpenJDK project: jcountdown – built by the community that mimics the spirit of ie6countdown.net. That is, to encourage users to move to the latest and greatest Java! Many thanks to all those involved, you can already see from the commit history.
• Adopt OpenJDK CloudBees Build Farm – thanks to the folks at CloudBees for helping us host our build farm on their CI/CD servers. This one was initially started by Martijn Verburg and later with the help of a number of JUG members have come to the point that major Java projects are built against different versions of the JDK. These projects include building the JDKs themselves (versions 1.7, 1.8, 1.9, Jigsaw and Shenandoah). This project has also helped support the Testing Java Early project and Quality  Outreach program.

These are just a handful of such creations and contributions from the members of the community, some of these projects would certainly need help from you. As a community one more thing we could do well is celebrate our victories and successes, and especially credit those that have been involved whether as individuals or a community. So that our next generation contributors feel inspired and encourage to do more good work and share it with us.

Contributions from the community

In a recent tweet and posts to various Java / JVM and developer mailing lists, I requested the community to come forward and share their contribution stories or those from others with our community. The purpose was two-fold, one to share it with the community and the other to write this post (which in turn is shared with the community). I was happy to see a handful of messages sent to me and the mailing lists by a number of community members. I’ll share some of these with you (in the order I have received them).

 

Sebastian Daschner:

I don’t know if that counts as contribution but I’ve hacked on the
OpenJDK compiler for fun several times. For example I added a new
thought up ‘maybe’ keyword which produces randomly executed code:
https://blog.sebastian-daschner.com/entries/maybe_keyword_in_java

Thomas Modeneis:

Thanks for writing, I like your initiative, its really good to show how people are doing and what they have been focusing on. Great idea.

From my part, I can tell about the DevoxxMA last month, I did a talk on the Hacker Space about the Adopt the OpenJDK and it was really great. We had about 30 or more attendees, it was in a open space so everyone that was going to any talk was passing and being grabbed to have a look about the topic, it was really challenging because I had no mic. but I managed to speak out loud and be listen, and I got great feedback after the session. I’m going to work over the weekend to upload the presentation and the recorded video and I will be posting here as soon as I have it done!

Martijn Verburg:

Good initiative.  So the major items I participated in were Date and Time and Lambdas Hackdays (reporting several bugs), submitted some warnings cleanups for OpenJDK.  Gave ~10 pages of feedback for jshell and generally tried to encourage people more capable than me to contribute :-).

Andrii Rodionov:

Olena Syrota and Oleg Tsal-Tsalko from Ukraine JUG: Contributing to JSR 367 test code-base (https://github.com/olegts/jsonb-spec), promoting ‘Adopt a JSR’ and JSON-B spec at JUG UA meetings (http://jug.ua/2015/04/json-binding/) and also at JavaDay Lviv conference (http://www.slideshare.net/olegtsaltsalko9/jsonb-spec).

Contributors

As you have seen that from out of a community of 9+ million users, only a handful of them came forward to share their stories. While I can point you out to another list of contributors who have been paramount with their contributions to the Adopt OpenJDK GitBook, for example, take a look at the list of contributors and also the committers on the git-repo. They have not just contributed to the book but to Java and the OpenJDK community, especially those who have helped translate the book into multiple languages. And then there are a number of them who haven’t come forward to add their names to the list, even though they have made valuable contributions.

From this I can say contributors can be like unsung heroes, either due their shy or low-profile nature or they just don’t get noticed by us. So it would only be fair to encourage them to come forward or share with the community about their contributions, however simple or small those may be. In addition to the above list I would like to also add a number of them (again apologies if I have missed out your name or not mentioned about you or all your contributions). These names are in no particular order but as they come to my mind as their contributions have been invaluable:

• Dalibor Topic (OpenJDK Project Lead) & the OpenJDK team
• Mario Torre & the RedHat OpenJDK team
• Tori Wieldt (Java Community manager) and her team
• Heather Vancura & the JCP team
• NightHacking, vJUG and RebelLabs (and the great people behind them)
• Nicolaas & the team at Cloudbees
• Chris Newland (JitWatch developer)
• Lucy Carey, Ellie & Mark Hazell (Devoxx UK & Voxxed)
• Richard Kolb (JUG South Africa)
• Daniel Bryant, Richard Warburton, Ben Evans, and a number of others from LJC
• Members of SouJava (Otavio, Thomas, Bruno, and others)
• Members of Bulgarian JUG (Ivan, Martin, Mitri) and neighbours
• Oti, Ludovic & Patrick Reinhart
• and a number of other contributors who for some reason I can’t remember…

I have named them for their contributions to the community by helping organise Hackdays during the week and weekends, workshops and hands-on sessions at conferences, giving lightening talks, speaking at conferences, allowing us to host our CI and build farm servers, travelling to different parts of the world holding the Java community flag, writing books, giving Java and advance-level training, giving feedback on new technologies and features, and innumerable other activities that support and push forward the Java / JVM platform.

How you can make a difference ? And why ?

You can make a difference by doing something as simple as clicking the like button (on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc…) or responding to a message on a mailing list by expressing your opinion about something you see or read about –as to why you think about it that way or how it could be different.

The answer to the question “And why ?” is simple, because you are part of a community and ‘you care’ and want to share your knowledge and experience with others — just like the others above who have spared free moments of their valuable time for us.

Is it hard to do it ? Where to start ? What needs most attention ?

 The answer is its not hard to do it, if so many have done it, you can do it as well. Where to start and what can you do ? I have written a page on this topic. And its worth reading it before going any further.

There is a dynamic list of topics that is worth considering when thinking of contributing to OpenJDK and Java. But recently I have filtered this list down to a few topics (in order of precedence):

• Testing Java Early project (Priority one)
• G1GC feedback
• Project Jigsaw
• Unified JVM logging
• Project Valhalla
• Project Kulla
• Project Shenandoah
• Project Penrose

We need you!

With that I would like to close by saying:

Not just “I”, but we as a community need you

This post have been re-blogged from the Java Advent Calendar 2015 site. Many thanks to its organisers and writers.

This post is part of the Java Advent Calendar and is licensed under the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license. If you like it, please spread the word by sharing, tweeting, FB, G+ and so on!

My first couple of months at Codurance

Some background

Some of you may know me from the various meetups in the city, especially my attendance at a number of LJC and LSCC meetup events. Attending these events I learnt about various conferences like Devoxx, SoCraTes, JAX London,  Java2Days, OpenFest, and I ended up attending and later presenting on various topic including Adopt OpenJDK.

During this time I met a lot of people with various levels of experience and my interest and urge to learn more about the Java/JVM platform, Code Quality, Software Design, XP Practices, Software Craftsmanship, etc…, were on the rise and saw no end. And whilst attending these events I came across Sandro and Mash, who were in those days hosting LSCC events. I went to many of LSCC events, especially liked the hands-on sessions (which are still my favourite).

I also noticed that many things I learnt at such events and conferences wouldn’t always be immediately recognised or accepted at the workplace. And moving to another work environment didn’t always solve this problem fully. I found that I wasn’t learning what I wanted from my peers and the things I learnt from the community I couldn’t apply at work. Besides very few were really in tuned with what the community was about. So one fine day I decided to take charge of my career and make a serious decision and take up the Apprenticeship program offered by Codurance and go through the process.

I was urged to go this way after being inspired by Sandro’s book: The Software Craftsman, attending all the SoCraTes UK conferences, and meeting with developers who valued and took pride of their work namely their craft.

I was urged to go this way after being inspired by Sandro’s book: The Software Craftsman, attending all the SoCraTes UK conferences, and meeting with developers who valued and took pride of their work namely their craft.

Where we are just now

It’s now been nearly two months since I have been working for Codurance, a formidable force. And so it’s also about time that I share my experiences with my fellow mates and the community around me.

During my first few weeks at Codurance, I have been busy learning various things that have been chalked out for becoming a craftsman.

When working on a kata or learning a concept, we paired or did what is known as ‘mob programming’ along with other apprentices and craftsmen. And most of the time used the pomodoro technique. Time boxing our work in intervals is something done both in groups and working individually. We would have a lot of discussions and retrospectives after working on a problem or writing some code from scratch.

Structure of my program

We used an internal tool based on the concept of Impact Mapping. I soon got interested in it when I saw my colleague Franzi (who is now a craftswoman) had used it to plan out her Apprenticeship route. Such a tool helps map out our goals and the tasks we need to perform to achieve it. And this can differ from person-to-person, depending on what they want to work on (driven by the Apprentice).

My mentor and other craftsmen reviewed them to get an idea of what I wanted to achieve for myself. And then its up to me to apply my own drive and perseverance to achieve the individual stories. My mentor and I meet and talk informally on a regular basis, many times pairing on a kata or a project or on the white board trying to get my head around a concept.

Days in the life of an Apprentice

I found the working hours quite flexible, remote working is also an option (when you are on the bench or if the client allows, if you are in a project). Our co-founders are understanding and compassionate about our individual situations.

Meetings are at their minimum, except for a weekly Apprentices meeting (run by an Apprentice and guided by at least one Craftsperson) and a bi-monthly company-wide catchup.

The Apprentices meetings are full of fun — we are accompanied by at least one Craftsperson, who disperses their knowledge and experience from a wide variety of topics designed to help us in the journey and fill the gaps in our knowledge and experience.

A bi-monthly catchup involves sharing of knowledge via lightning talks, discussions and pairing sessions on pet projects over pizzas and beer (and of course veggies and non-alcoholic beverages for the teetotalers).

Katas, code reviews, mob programming and projects make up a learning week – all of these done individually or when pairing with another.

Katas

On a daily basis I have worked on different katas or try to solve the same kata in various different ways (using different testing and refactoring approaches). This in turn gave me better insights into designing and refactoring techniques. Trying to solve the same problem in different ways has a positive impact on our problem solving skills especially when writing code. In my case I also learnt how to use the different libraries and methods to write tests. I would like to cite Samir, thanks to you, for the suggesting this approach during the first week of my Apprenticeship.

Code reviews

Just last week we did a group code review and time-boxed ourselves, performed a retrospective at the end of each interval and ensured we delivered a good chunk of the feedback before close of play. Such regular code review exercises are helping all of us learn about how to code better as we are not only learning from feedback from the tools we used, but also through exchange of feedback from our peers who were involved in the group code review session.

Software Design, Specification Gathering & Communication

Recently we had an interesting mob-programming session where we were trying to model and write a game. At the end of the session, we had a retrospective, discussing the things we did well and didn’t do well. Each of the apprentices and craftsmen were performing a specific role i.e. Developer, Domain Expert, etc… We learnt in retrospective, about areas where we could have done better and should focus on. That any test written gives immediate feedback about how well we have understood the domain and if we were taking the right approach. Why a certain approach when starting a project is more advantageous than another approach. What questions to ask and why it is important to ask the right questions to the domain expert or to give the right level of information to another developer and vice-versa. Sandro has described this process in detail in his blog post recently.

Fun, socialising and sharing

I found our office environment to be conducive to learning, sharing and collaboration. We even have a pairing rota that we use from time-to-time to record or suggest pairing sessions during the week.

We share links to events, conferences, tweets, interesting articles, videos, blog posts, etc… via slack, document discussions and brain dumps via Google doc, huddles during lunch- and tea- breaks to talk about anything we are working on. Thanks to the library of printed and digital books to our disposal, the huge collection of blog posts and videos on our site.

The apprentices and some craftsmen have collectively started a social event which of course happens every Friday, sometimes it’s dinner at a nearby restaurant, while at other times an indoor movie over snacks and drinks at our office premises.

It is worthwhile and that’s why we are here

It is a privilege to be able to work alongside very experienced craftsmen from our industry. We are very lucky and thankful to have the opportunity to be guided and mentored by talented and like minded developers.

This is my first job where the company has a completely flat hierarchy and where we share similar values.

Closing note

Work is fun and learning is enjoyable when we love what we do and are amongst friends with similar goals and aspirations.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post and I hope it was interesting. Looking forward to write more and share such experiences in future posts.

Many thanks to Sandro, Tomaz, Alex, Franzi and David for all the feedback provided for this blog post.

 

Why not build #OpenJDK 9 using #Docker ? – Part 2 of 2

…continuing from Why not build #OpenJDK 9 using #Docker ? – Part 1 of 2.

I ran into a number of issues and you can see from my commits, I pulled myself out of it, but to run this Dockerfile from the command-line I used this instruction:

$ docker build -t neomatrix369/openjdk9 .

you can also do it using the below if you have not set your permissions:

$ sudo docker build -t neomatrix369/openjdk9 .

and get the below (summarised) output:

Sending build context to Docker daemon 3.072 kB
Sending build context to Docker daemon 
Step 0 : FROM phusion/baseimage:latest
 ---> 5a14c1498ff4
Step 1 : MAINTAINER Mani Sarkar (from @adoptopenjdk)
 ---> Using cache
 ---> 95e30b7f52b9
Step 2 : RUN apt-get update &&   apt-get install -y     libxt-dev zip pkg-config libX11-dev libxext-dev     libxrender-dev libxtst-dev libasound2-dev libcups2-dev libfreetype6-dev &&   rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
 ---> Using cache
 ---> 1ea3bbb15c2d
Step 3 : RUN apt-get update
 ---> Using cache
 ---> 6c3938f4d23d
Step 4 : RUN apt-get install -y mercurial ca-certificates-java build-essential
 ---> Using cache
 ---> e3f99b5a3bd3
Step 5 : RUN cd /tmp &&   hg clone http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk9/jdk9 openjdk9 &&   cd openjdk9 &&   sh ./get_source.sh
 ---> Using cache
 ---> 26cfaf16b9fa
Step 6 : RUN apt-get install -y wget &&   wget --no-check-certificate --header "Cookie: oraclelicense=accept-securebackup-cookie" http://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/java/jdk/8u45-b14/jdk-8u45-linux-x64.tar.gz
 ---> Using cache
 ---> 696889250fed
Step 7 : RUN tar zxvf jdk-8u45-linux-x64.tar.gz -C /opt
 ---> Using cache
 ---> c25cc9201c1b
Step 8 : RUN cd /tmp/openjdk9 &&   bash ./configure --with-cacerts-file=/etc/ssl/certs/java/cacerts --with-boot-jdk=/opt/jdk1.8.0_45
 ---> Using cache
 ---> 4e425de379e6
Step 9 : RUN cd /tmp/openjdk9 &&   make clean images
 ---> Using cache
 ---> 2d9e17c870be
Step 10 : RUN cd /tmp/openjdk9 &&   cp -a build/linux-x86_64-normal-server-release/images/jdk     /opt/openjdk9
 ---> Using cache
 ---> 9250fac9b500
Step 11 : RUN cd /tmp/openjdk9 &&   find /opt/openjdk9 -type f -exec chmod a+r {} + &&   find /opt/openjdk9 -type d -exec chmod a+rx {} +
 ---> Using cache
 ---> d0c597d045d4
Step 12 : ENV PATH /opt/openjdk9/bin:$PATH
 ---> Using cache
 ---> 3965c3e47855
Step 13 : ENV JAVA_HOME /opt/openjdk9
 ---> Using cache
 ---> 5877e8efd939
Successfully built 5877e8efd939

The above action creates an image which is stored in your local repository (use docker images to enlist the images in the repo). If you want to load the image into a container, and access the files it has built or see anything else, do the below:

$ sudo docker run -it --name openjdk9 neomatrix369/openjdk9 /bin/bash

this will take you to a bash prompt into the container and you can run any of your linux commands and access the file system.

Explaining docker run

$ sudo docker run -it --name openjdk9 neomatrix369/openjdk9 java -version

will show you this

openjdk version "1.9.0-internal"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.9.0-internal-_2015_06_04_06_46-b00)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 1.9.0-internal-_2015_06_04_06_46-b00, mixed mode)

Here’s a breakdown of the docker run command:

docker run	The command to create and start a new Docker container.
-it	To run in interactive mode, so you can see the after running the container.
neomatrix369/openjdk9	This is a reference to the image tag by name (which we created above).
java -version	Runs the java command asking its version, inside the containing, which is assisted by the two environment variables PATH and JAVA_HOME which was set in the Dockerfile above.

Footnotes

You might have noticed I grouped very specific instructions with each step, especially the RUN commands, its because, each time I got one of these wrong, it would re-execute the step again, including the steps that ran fine and didn’t need re-executing. Not only is this unnecessary its not using our resources efficiently which is what Docker brings us. So any addition, edition or deletion to any step will only result in that step being executed, and not the other steps that are fine.

So one of the best practises is to keep the steps granular enough and pre-load files and data beforehand and give it to docker. It has amazing caching and archiving mechanisms built in.

Save our work

As we know if we do not save the container into the image, our changes are lost.

If I didn’t use the docker build command I used earlier I could have, after the build process was completed and image created, used the below command:

$ sudo docker commit [sha of the image] neomatrix369/openjdk9

Sharing your docker image on Docker hub

Once you are happy with your changes, and want to share it with community at large, do the below:

$ sudo docker push neomatrix369/openjdk9

and you will see these depending on which of your layers have been found in the repo and which ones are new (this one is an example snapshot of the process):

The push refers to a repository [neomatrix369/openjdk9] (len: 1)
5877e8efd939: Image already exists 
3965c3e47855: Image already exists 
d0c597d045d4: Image already exists 
9250fac9b500: Image already exists 
2d9e17c870be: Buffering to Disk
.
.
.

There is plenty of room for development and improvement of this Docker script. So happy hacking and would love to hear your feedback or contributions from you.

BIG Thanks

Big thanks to the below two who proof-read my post and added value to it, whilst enjoying the #Software #Craftsmanship developer community (organised and supported by @LSCC):
Oliver Nautsch – @ollispieps (JUG Switzerland)
Amir Bazazi (@Codurance) – @amirbazazi

Special thanks to Roberto Cortez (@radcortez) for your Docker posts, these inspired and helped me write my first Docker post.

Resources

[1] Docker
[2] Get into Docker – A Guide for Total Newbies
[3] Docker for Total Newbies Part 2: Distribute Your Applications with Docker Images
[4] Docker posts on Voxxed
[5] OpenJDK
[6] Building OpenJDK
[7] Building OpenJDK on Linux, MacOs and Windows
[8] Virtual Machines (OpenJDK)
[9] Build your own OpenJDK
[10] Vagrant script (OpenJDK)
[11] YOUR DOCKER IMAGE MIGHT BE BROKEN without you knowing it
[12] Dockerfile on github
[13] Adopt OpenJDK: Getting Started Kit
[14] London Java Community

How is Java / JVM built ? Adopt OpenJDK is your answer!

Introduction & history

As some of you may already know, starting with Java 7, OpenJDK is the Reference Implementation (RI) to Java. The below time line gives you an idea about the history of OpenJDK:

OpenJDK history (2006 till date)

See Adopt OpenJDK – the past present and future [1] for some more details.

If you have wondered about the JDK or JRE binaries that you download from vendors like Oracle, Red Hat, etcetera, then the clue is that these all stem from OpenJDK. Each vendor then adds some extra artefacts that are not open source yet due to security, proprietary or other reasons.

What is OpenJDK made of ?

OpenJDK is made up of a number of repositories, namely corba, hotspot, jaxp, jaxws, jdk, langtools, and nashorn. Between OpenjJDK8 and OpenJDK9 there have been no new repositories introduced, but lots of new changes and restructuring, primarily due to Jigsaw – the modularisation of Java itself [2] [3] [4] [5].

repo composition, language breakdown (metrics are estimated)

Recent history

OpenJDK Build Benchmarks – build-infra (Nov 2011) by Fredrik Öhrström, ex-Oracle, OpenJDK hero!

Fredrik Öhrström visited the LJC [16] in November 2011 where he showed us how to build OpenJDK on the three major platforms, and also distributed a four page leaflet with the benchmarks of the various components and how long they took to build. The new build system and the new makefiles are a result of the build system being re-written (build-infra).

Below are screen-shots of the leaflets, a good reference to compare our journey:

The New Build System [23]

The New Makefiles [24]

Build Benchmarks page 1 [25]

Build Benchmarks page 2 [26]

How has Java the language and platform built over the years ?

Java is built by bootstrapping an older (previous) version of Java – i.e. Java is built using Java itself as its building block. Where older components are put together to create a new component which in the next phase becomes the building block. A good example of bootstrapping can be found at Scheme from Scratch [6] or even on Wikipedia [7].

OpenJDK8 [8] is compiled and built using JDK7, similarly OpenJDK9 [9] is compiled and built using JDK8. In theory OpenJDK8 can be compiled using the images created from OpenJDK8, similarly for OpenJDK9 using OpenJDK9. Using a process called bootcycle images – a JDK image of OpenJDK is created and then using the same image, OpenJDK is compiled again, which can be accomplished using a make command option:

$ make bootcycle-images       # Build images twice, second time with newly built JDK

make offers a number of options under OpenJDK8 and OpenJDK9, you can build individual components or modules by naming them, i.e.

$ make [component-name] | [module-name]

or even run multiple build processes in parallel, i.e.

$ make JOBS=<n>                 # Run <n> parallel make jobs

Finally install the built artefact using the install option, i.e.

$ make install

Some myths busted

OpenJDK or Hotspot to be more specific isn’t completely written in C/C++, a good part of the code-base is good ‘ole Java (see the composition figure above). So you don’t have to be a hard-core developer to contribute to OpenJDK. Even the underlying C/C++ code code-base isn’t scary or daunting to look at. For example here is an extract of a code snippet from vm/memory/universe.cpp in the HotSpot repo –

http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk6/jdk6/hotspot/raw-file/a541ca8fa0e3/src/share/vm/memory/universe.cpp [10]:

.
.
.
Universe::initialize_heap()

if (UseParallelGC) {
    #ifndef SERIALGC
    Universe::_collectedHeap = new ParallelScavengeHeap();
    #else // SERIALGC
        fatal("UseParallelGC not supported in this VM.");
    #endif // SERIALGC

} else if (UseG1GC) {
    #ifndef SERIALGC
    G1CollectorPolicy* g1p = new G1CollectorPolicy();
    G1CollectedHeap* g1h = new G1CollectedHeap(g1p);
    Universe::_collectedHeap = g1h;
    #else // SERIALGC
        fatal("UseG1GC not supported in java kernel vm.");
    #endif // SERIALGC

} else {
    GenCollectorPolicy* gc_policy;

    if (UseSerialGC) {
        gc_policy = new MarkSweepPolicy();
    } else if (UseConcMarkSweepGC) {
        #ifndef SERIALGC
        if (UseAdaptiveSizePolicy) {
            gc_policy = new ASConcurrentMarkSweepPolicy();
        } else {
            gc_policy = new ConcurrentMarkSweepPolicy();
        }
        #else // SERIALGC
            fatal("UseConcMarkSweepGC not supported in this VM.");
        #endif // SERIALGC
    } else { // default old generation
        gc_policy = new MarkSweepPolicy();
    }

    Universe::_collectedHeap = new GenCollectedHeap(gc_policy);
}
.
.
.

(please note that the above code snippet might have changed since published here)

The things that appears clear from the above code-block are, we are looking at how pre-compiler notations are used to create Hotspot code that supports a certain type of GC i.e. Serial GC or Parallel GC. Also the type of GC policy is selected in the above code-block when one or more GC switches are toggled i.e. UseAdaptiveSizePolicy when enabled selects the Asynchronous Concurrent Mark and Sweep policy. In case of either Use Serial GC or Use Concurrent Mark Sweep GC are not selected, then the GC policy selected is Mark and Sweep policy. All of this and more is pretty clearly readable and verbose, and not just nicely formatted code that reads like English.

Further commentary can be found in the section called Deep dive Hotspot stuff in the Adopt OpenJDK Intermediate & Advance experiences [11] document.

Steps to build your own JDK or JRE

Earlier we mentioned about JDK and JRE images – these are no longer only available to the big players in the Java world, you and I can build such images very easily. The steps for the process have been simplified, and for a quick start see the Adopt OpenJDK Getting Started Kit [12] and Adopt OpenJDK Intermediate & Advance experiences [11] documents. For detailed version of the same steps, please see the Adopt OpenJDK home page [13]. Basically building a JDK image from the OpenJDK code-base boils down to the below commands:

(setup steps have been made brief and some commands omitted, see links above for exact steps)

 $ hg clone http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk8/jdk8 jdk8  (a)...OpenJDK8

or

$ hg clone http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk9/jdk9 jdk9  (a)...OpenJDK9

$ ./get_source.sh                                     (b)

$ bash configure                                      (c)

$ make clean images                                   (d)

(setup steps have been made brief and some commands omitted, see links above for exact steps)

To explain what is happening at each of the steps above:

(a) We clone the openjdk mercurial repo just like we would using git clone ….

(b) Once we have step (a) completed, we change into the folder created, and run the get_source.sh command, which is equivalent to a git fetch or a git pull, since the step (a) only brings down base files and not all of the files and folders.

(c) Here we run a script that checks for and creates the configuration needed to do the compile and build process

(d) Once step (c) is success we perform a complete compile, build and create JDK and JRE images from the built artefacts

As you can see these are dead-easy steps to follow to build an artefact or JDK/JRE images [step (a) needs to be run only once].

Benefits

– contribute to the evolution and improvement of the Java the language & platform

– learn about the internals of the language and platform

– learn about the OS platform and other technologies whilst doing the above

– get involved in F/OSS projects

– stay on top the latest changes in the Java / JVM sphere

– knowledge and experience that helps professionally but also these are not readily available from other sources (i.e. books, training, work-experience, university courses, etcetera).

– advancement in career

– personal development (soft skills and networking)

Contribute

Join the Adopt OpenJDK [13] and Betterrev [15] projects and contribute by giving us feedback about everything Java including these projects. Join the Adoption Discuss mailing list [14] and other OpenJDK related mailing lists to start with, these will keep you updated with latest progress and changes to OpenJDK. Fork any of the projects you see and submit changes via pull-requests.

Thanks and support

Adopt OpenJDK [13] and umbrella projects have been supported and progressed with help of JCP [21], the Openjdk team [22], JUGs like London Java Community [16], SouJava [17] and other JUGs in Brazil, a number of JUGs in Europe i.e. BGJUG (Bulgarian JUG) [18], BeJUG (Belgium JUG) [19], Macedonian JUG [20], and a number of other small JUGs. We hope in the coming time more JUGs and individuals would get involved. If you or your JUG wish to participate please get in touch.

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Credits

Special thanks to +Martijn Verburg (incepted Adopt OpenJDK),+Richard Warburton, +Oleg Shelajev, +Mite Mitreski, +Kaushik Chaubal and +Julius G for helping improve the content and quality of this post, and sharing their OpenJDK experience with us.

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How to get started ?

Join the Adoption Discuss mailing list [14], go to the Adopt OpenJDK home page [13] to get started, followed by referring to the Adopt OpenJDK Getting Started Kit [12] and Adopt OpenJDK Intermediate & Advance experiences [11] documents.

Please share your comments here or tweet at @theNeomatrix369.

Resources

[1] Adopt OpenJDK – the past present and future

[2] http://mreinhold.org/blog/on-the-next-train

[3] http://mreinhold.org/blog/jigsaw-phase-two

[4] http://mreinhold.org/blog/late-for-the-train-qa

[5] http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jigsaw/

[6] Scheme from Scratch

[7] Bootstrapping on Wikipedia

[8] OpenJDK8

[9] OpenJDK9

[10] Source src/share/vm/memory/universe.cpp in hotspot

[11] Adopt OpenJDK Intermediate & Advance experiences

[12] Adopt OpenJDK Getting Started Kit

[13] Adopt OpenJDK home page

[14] Adoption Discuss

[15] Betterrev

[16] London Java Community

[17] SouJava

[18] BGJUG (Bulgarian JUG)

[19] BeJUG (Belgium JUG)

[20] Macedonian JUG

[21] Java Community Process – JCP

[22] OpenJDK team

Our sister project – Adopt-a-JSR

[23] The New Build System

[24] The New Makefiles

[25] Build Benchmarks page 1

[26] Build Benchmarks page 2

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This post is part of the Java Advent Calendar and is licensed under the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license. If you like it, please spread the word by sharing, tweeting, FB, G+ and so on!

Post #fosdem, #jfokus – lots more #java, #jsr & #openjdk news from all over!

In the last couple of weeks since FOSDEM 2013, Jfokus 2013 and, events and hackdays organised by LJC JUG members, we have had a lots of exciting news and resources to share with you. The source of the information have been mailing lists / forums, meetup events, twitter and other sources.

Plenty were spoken about #java, #jsr and #openjdk, the topics covered by the #adoptajar and #adoptopenjdk programs.

FOSDEM 2013

• The OpenJDK and JSR topics get good coverage at FOSDEM 2013! JUG members participating!
• FOSDEM 2013 Lightening talk videos

Speaker interviews:

• https://fosdem.org/2013/interviews/
• https://fosdem.org/2013/news/2013-01-31-last-set-of-speaker-interviews/

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Jfokus 2013

#Jfokus coverage of #java, a snapshot by Kevin Farnham:

• Monday at Jfokus 2013: Tutorials and Hands-On Labs
• Tuesday at Jfokus 2013: Intro, a New Java Champion, Jfokus Embedded Launch, Keynotes, Technical Sessions, Buffet, and BOFs
• Wednesday at Jfokus 2013: Then Was Then, Now Is Now, It’s Time to Be Smart (Jonas Bonér and the Final Jfokus Embedded Sessions)
• Video & archive for 2013 to feature soon !

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@steveonjava – Nighthacking!

Watch all the recordings of Steve’s Nighthacking from FOSDEM 2013 through to Jfokus 2013!

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LJC events & hackdays

Garbage collection – The useful parts

• Meetup event
• Recorded presentation
• Slides

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WebSocket & JSON Hack Day (covering implementation for JSR 356 & JSR 353)

• Meetup event
• Recorded presentation
• Slides
• Github (JSR-353-JSON artefact: https://github.com/Adopt-a-JSR/JSR-353-JSON; JSR-356-WebSocketAPI to follow soon!)
• David’s github link:  https://github.com/davidillsley/json-workshop
• JSR-353 (JSON): http://glassfish.java.net/adoptajsr/jsr353.html (http://json-processing-spec.java.net/)
  
• JSR-356 (Websocket): http://glassfish.java.net/adoptajsr/jsr356.html (http://websocket-spec.java.net/)

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Bring your Performance Problems Panel

• Meetup event
• Recorded presentation

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@adoptajsr news feed

– Plenty of updates on polls, JSRs, presentations, github projects, etc… were discussed on twitter.
– WebSocket & JSON Hack Day (covering implementation for JSR 356 & JSR 353) – see above!
– Suggestion to extend / improve the Java API – Thanks Hildeberto Mendonça for coming forward to contribute!
– Modernize Connector/MDB — Vote and comment – Thanks Richard Kolb for support such initiatives!
– CDI 1.1 applications you can work with – Thanks Luigi for the contribution!

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@adoptopenjdk news feed

– Updates on latest changes and developments in the OpenJDK world that were discussed amongs members on twitter.
– Potential plans to deprecate SPARC V8 support in HotSpot!
– StringBuffer to StringBuilder again – discussions rekindled!

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Upcoming events and meetings

Adopt-a-JSR online meeting – February 27
Further hackdays, discussion panels and events to be organised by LJC JUG members.
26-27 March 2013, Devoxx UK

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Read about the Adopt OpenJDK program at the the Adopt OpenJDK java.net project website.

Join the Adopt OpenJDK mailing list at the google group. Find out how to join a Google group or send an email to adopt-openjdk@googlegroups.com to subscribe to the mailing list.

Read about the Adopt-a-JSR program at the java.net project website.

Join the Adopt-a-JSR mailing list at the java.net mailing list. Send an email to members@adoptajsr.java.net to subscribe to the mailing list.