Landon Fuller

Puzzle Pirates - A More Entertaining Hello World

Status Update

I've spent some more time working on porting JDK 1.6 -- adding support for Tiger (10.4), fixing stack alignment issues for both amd64 and i386, fixing build system issues, and more. On Leopard, the 32-bit JDK now builds to completion. As evidenced by the above "Hello, World", X11 Swing is working on the 32-bit JVM.

Work is still progressing on the 16-byte stack alignment issue. In the meantime, I've enabled the gcc -mstackrealign option to force stack alignment in compiled JVM code. This ensures that calls back into the JVM are properly aligned:

On the Intel x86, the -mstackrealign option will generate an alternate
prologue and epilogue that realigns the runtime stack. This supports mixing
legacy codes that keep a 4-byte aligned stack with modern codes that keep a
16-byte stack for SSE compatibility. The alternate prologue and epilogue are
slower and bigger than the regular ones, and the alternate prologue requires
an extra scratch register

To replace this temporary work-around, I'm currently working on fixing the call stack alignment in the HotSpot Interpreter. Currently most calls are properly aligned, with the JVM running until it hits a JNI call. The JNI code generation assumes that arguments can be pushed directly to the stack prior to calling the stub generator, making alignment more difficult. I have not started work on alignment in the c1 or c2 compilers. Due to -mstackrealign compiler bugs in Tiger, the JVM must be built on Leopard -- however, it should be possible to build a JDK to run on Tiger.

For 64-bit Leopard systems, I've fixed up some latent alignment issues in HotSpot (Leopard is very picky about checking alignment in dyld), and the code appears to work fine with a few caveats. I've only spent a few hours on this today, but 64-bit Java should be the most stable and easiest to port. There is a known issue in the AMD64 JVM that I have not had time to track down, occaisionally triggering the following assert:

 javasrc_1_6_jrl/hotspot/src/cpu/amd64/vm/frame_amd64.cpp:118
  assert((intptr_t) sp() <= (intptr_t) result,
           "result must >= than stack pointer");

As a temporary work-around, the x86_64 JVM appears to run fine (if slowly) in interpreter mode (-Xint).

Future Direction

As a FreeBSD-Java committer, I will be merging low-risk changes upstream to the FreeBSD Java Project (Code). Potentially destabilizing changes to Hotspot interpreter / compiler will not be merged until they've seen adequate review by the FreeBSD and OpenJDK teams.

There are tentative plans to merge the BSD Java changes into the OpenJDK project. This isn't something I'm directly involved with, but I have signed the Sun Contributor Agreement in preparation.

I am also very interested in external contribution -- this is a part time, after-work project for me! See below for code access.

In progress work:

• i386 JIT 16-byte intepreter and c1/c2 compiler stack alignment
• Outstanding AMD64 bug(s)
• Audio support (HAE implementation needs to be written using CoreAudio)
• Support for setting java thread priority (should be simple, just requires a implementation using the mach thread API).

Code Access

I am making the JRL-licensed source code available via a Mercurial repository. Since the OpenJDK project is moving to Mercurial, I thought I'd get on the bandwagon -- it is working out well. The repository is available at:

http://hg.bikemonkey.org/javasrc_1_6_jrl_darwin/

To download the source code, you must be a licensee in good standing under the Java Research License. To ensure compliance, the repository requires authentication -- the username is "jrl", and the password is 'I am a Licensee in good standing'. By downloading this source code, you certify that you are a Licensee in good standing under the Java Research License of the Java 2 SDK, and that your access, use, and distribution of code and information you may obtain at this site is subject to the License. Please review the license at http://java.net/jrl.csp, and submit your license acceptance to Sun.

Currently, all FreeBSD JDK16 work is under the JRL. In the future, the work may be relicensed, with a copyright grant, for OpenJDK under the GPLv2.

This not something I like to do, but I request that all submissions assign copyright to myself, such that I have the ability to relicense/grant copyright for submission to the upstream projects. If anyone has a better idea of how to handle this, I'm very interested.

To build the x86_32 JDK:

cd control/make
env DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`/../build/bsd-i586-debug/lib/i386/client \
make ALT_BOOTDIR=/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Home \
ALT_MOTIF_DIR=/opt/local SYS_CFLAGS="" LANG="C" JAVA_HOME="" CLASSPATH="" \
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="" MAKEFLAGS="" SKIP_COMPARE_IMAGES="YES" \
BUILD_DEPLOY="false" ALT_DEVTOOLS_PATH=/usr ALT_CUPS_HEADERS_PATH=/usr/include \
HOTSPOT_BUILD_JOBS=1 PARALLEL_BUILD_JOBS=1 debug_build

To build the x86_64 (amd64) JDK:

cd control/make
env DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`/../build/bsd-amd64-debug/lib/amd64/server \
make ALT_BOOTDIR=/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Home \
ALT_MOTIF_DIR=/opt/local SYS_CFLAGS="" LANG="C" JAVA_HOME="" CLASSPATH="" \
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="" MAKEFLAGS="" SKIP_COMPARE_IMAGES="YES" \
BUILD_DEPLOY="false" ALT_DEVTOOLS_PATH=/usr ALT_CUPS_HEADERS_PATH=/usr/include \
HOTSPOT_BUILD_JOBS=4 PARALLEL_BUILD_JOBS=4 BSD_OVERRIDE_ARCH=amd64 JAVA_JVM_FLAGS=-Xint JAVAC_FLAGS=-Xint debug_build

Remove the "-Xint" flags to disable interpreter mode (and trigger the known issue in frame_amd64.cpp).

Note that the debug build is considerably slower than a production build, and interpreted mode is even slower!

If you're interested in assisting with IA32 stack alignment issues, the current patch is available here: patch-stack-align-darwin-v2.

Looking for a Job?

Lastly, a plug for my group at Three Rings. We're looking to hire Java Engineers (not just billing!) and FreeBSD Developer/Admins. The group rocks (I run it!), so feel free to drop me a line if you're interested.