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IcedTea

The IcedTea project provides a harness to build the source code from http://openjdk.java.net using Free Software build tools and adds a number of key features to the upstream OpenJDK codebase:

A Free 64-bit plugin with LiveConnect and Java Web Start support
Support for additional platforms via a pure interpreted mode in HotSpot (Zero) or the alternative CACAO virtual machine. Experimental JIT support for Zero is also available via Shark.

Read the Original Announcement

As well as IcedTea, the repository now also contains:

IcePick, which allows the OpenJDK language tools (javac, javadoc, javah, javap, apt) to be built separately using any 1.5 compliant Java compiler and be used by any GNU Classpath based runtime
BrandWeg, which adds elements of OpenJDK to the existing sources of GNU Classpath.
Build support for VisualVM, a lightweight profiler and troubleshooting tool.

Also of relevance is the CVMI OpenJDK project, which aims to document the OpenJDK VM interface and foster links with alternative VMs. Discussion of this takes place on cvmi-dev@openjdk.java.net and on the CVMIDiscussion page here on the IcedTea wiki.

1 Getting IcedTea
2 Quick start & Building
3 Contributing to IcedTea
4 FAQs
5 Upstream Links

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Getting IcedTea

Stable releases (currently IcedTea6 1.6.3, 1.7.4 and 1.8.1, based on OpenJDK6, and IcedTea7 1.13, based on OpenJDK7) and RPMs of IcedTea are available on the Downloads page. Since OpenJDK6 has been released, we have been focusing our attention on IcedTea6, instead of IcedTea7 which is based on OpenJDK7.

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Quick start & Building

First either download a released version of IcedTea6 or obtain it from the Mercurial repositories. With a Mercurial checkout, you must first generate the autotools machinery.

hg clone -r icedtea6-1.8.1 http://icedtea.classpath.org/hg/release/icedtea6-1.8
cd icedtea6-1.8
./autogen.sh

For a bleeding-edge version of IcedTea6, use http://icedtea.classpath.org/hg/icedtea6 instead. For IcedTea7, use http://icedtea.classpath.org/hg/icedtea.

To build IcedTea:

./configure
make

Additional instructions are also available for Debian, Fedora, RHEL 5.x and Gentoo. These may be outdated.

A full list of required packages is available at BuildRequirements. CommonIssues lists some of the problems you may encounter in building IcedTea and their solution. Note that JAVA_HOME should be unset before attempting to build IcedTea.

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Contributing to IcedTea

The current focus is on pushing IcedTea patches upstream where possible -- see IcedTea6 Patches

IcedTea7 now uses its own Mercurial forest located at http://hg.openjdk.java.net/icedtea/jdk7 as its upstream version of OpenJDK7. The differences between that and Oracle's OpenJDK7 at http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk7/jdk7 are listed in IcedTea 7 forest patches.

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