In compiling openjdk6 on ubuntu 8.04 it fails while compiling CharsetEncoder.java.
Compiling the same source on ubuntu 7.10 does not fail. I asked an Ubuntu contact
about this and he claims it has to do with quoting problems in the spp.sh shell script
and referenced this icedtea patch

http://icedtea.classpath.org/hg/icedtea6/file/9bf416fd51f8/patches/icedtea-generated.patch

That changes SPP_CMD to use /bin/bash which probably is not a good solution.

What occurs is CharsetEncoder.java is generated using a shell/sed/awk script from a
different source file. It uses tags like $replType$ which get replaced with various
strings encoded in the script. What happens is in the generated source file the
$replType$ tag is not replaced and the compiler barfs with a syntax error.