For which surprises do I have to prepare myself if I switch from Sun JDK to OpenJDK?

Question

If I\'d switch from Sun JDK to OpenJDK which surprises do I have to prepare myself for?

What does frequently go wrong and how difficult can this be?

Of course, e

Answer 1

It is unlikely that anything will go wrong with OpenJDK. It is considered 100% compatible by now. But I think it is good to know what parts had to be rewritten and therefore are not using the same code as the SunJDK.

The Wikipedia entry has a good overview of this:

As of May 2008, the only part of the Class library that remains proprietary and closed-source (4% as of May 2007 for OpenJDK 7, and less than 1% as of May 2008 and OpenJDK 6) is the SNMP implementation.

Since the first May 2007 release, Sun Microsystems, with the help of the community, has released as free and open-source software or replaced with free and open-source alternatives almost all the encumbered code:

• All the audio engine code, including the software synthesizer, has been released as Open-source. The closed-source software synthesizer has been replaced by a new synthesizer developed specifically for OpenJDK called Gervill,

• All cryptography classes used in the Class library have been released as Open-source,

• The code that scales and rasterizes fonts has been replaced by FreeType

• The native color management system has been replaced by LittleCMS. There is a pluggable layer in the JDK, so that the commercial version can use the old color management system and OpenJDK can use LittleCMS.

• The anti-aliasing graphics rasterizer code has been replaced by the Open-sourced Pisces renderer used in the phoneME project. This code is fully functional, but still needs some performance enhancements,

• The JavaScript plugin has been open-sourced (the Rhino JavaScript engine itself was open-sourced from the beginning).