What version of openjdk8's source do I get to build update 131, same as oracle's latest? jdk8/jdk8u?

Question

I'm trying for a few days to build my own jdk8 on RHEL 7.3. Until now I was using the source here: http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk8/jdk8/

But there is also http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk8u/jdk8u/

1) What are the differences between the two?

2) Which one do I have to choose to get update 131 (same as oracle for now)?

When I download the source and do hg tags:

a)In jdk8, there is one jdk8-b131 with tag 939

b)In jdk8u, there is plenty of jdk8:

jdk8-b131 with tag 955

jdk8u131-b00 with tag 1888

up to jdk8u131-b11 with tag 1915

Could anyone explain to me what genius is managing this? And where do I get THE source to build my jdk at home? And Why?

Thx, Animal

Answer 1

Some of this is very silly. It's a result of how OpenJDK 8's initial development and updates are two different OpenJDK projects.

• The JDK 8 Project was responsible for developing and releasing OpenJDK 8 initially.

  • They used http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk8/jdk8/ as their repository
  • They used http://mail.openjdk.java.net/mailman/listinfo/jdk8-dev as their mailing list.

• The JDK 8 Updates Project is responsible for developing and releasing the post-release updates to OpenJDK 8.

  • They use http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk8u/jdk8u/ as their repositoriy
  • They use http://mail.openjdk.java.net/mailman/listinfo/jdk8u-dev as their mailing list.

In other words, do not use jdk8/jdk8! They contain unpatched vulnerabilities.

Lets break down the tag format used in OpenJDK 8 jdk8(uXYZ)-bABC

• jdk8 indicates that this is a JDK 8 or Update
• uXYZ indicates what JDK 8 Update this tag indicates
• bABC is the build number of this particular update. Build numbers are meaningless to us outside Oracle. They correspond to some internal build numbers.

The jdk8-bXYZ tags should be identical between jdk8u and jdk8, since the update repository contains all the tags from the initial jdk8 repository. The jdk8uXYZ-bABC tags are the ones you want. These tags are in numerical order. jdk8u131-b00 is an earlier version compared to jdk8u131-b11.

So, if you want the latest JDK 8 Update, look at http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk8u/jdk8u/ (or basically the same contents but gets updates (possibly) faster: http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk8u/jdk8u-dev/), find the jdk8uXYZ-bABC tag where XYZ is the highest value (pick jdk8u121 over jdk8u23) and then pick the one with the highest ABC value (pick jdk8u121-b02 over jdk8u121-b01 and jdk8u49-b24). Keep in mind that it may be an in-development version!

If you know you want something analogous to Oracle's JDK 8 Update 131, look for the jdk8u131-ABC tag with the highest value of ABC (appears to be jdk8u131-b11). The tags don't change after Oracle's public release of similarly-numbered update.

Everyone agrees this is a bad versioning system. I know some people who publicly objected against this weird repository system too, and I agree with them.

The tags are getting fixed for OpenJDK 9 via JEP 223 (see "Mercurial changeset tags").