The Hotspot build process depends on PATH and other environment variables being set correctly. This can lead to situations where the build works for a developer but break for RE due to different environment settings. A recent example of this is "6175490: Hotspot build can't find as binary".

It might be a good idea for Hotspot to use a similar mechanism as the J2SE libraries build to eliminate environment problems. The libraries ignore PATH and instead use a hardcoded but overridable path to a resource. for example:

ifndef ALT_COMPILER_PATH
COMPILER_PATH=/java/devtools/${platform}/SUNWspro/SOS8
else
COMPILER_PATH=${ALT_COMPILER_PATH}
endif

AS=${COMPILER_PATH}/bin/as
###@###.### 10/13/04 13:18 GMT