We need to get a good unique and easily readable version string for non-promoted builds.

The aim is to get a good solution for JDK 8.

We need to accompany jdk version string with additional attributes like build date, build attempt number, sqe group name or username for adhoc builds, intent (type), i.e. nightly/pit/promotion/adhoc.

Probably, this should be added to a separate line of the version string - in order to keep current version parsing code which is spread over various scripts and tests.

For example in can look like:

type:nightly;group:tools;date:....

We need the above to be able to find out easily by looking at the binaries what are we dealing with. Both for human users and for automated systems.

Current version string is very inflexible, it just mentions release and some promoted build number.

A requirement from Aurora is that we need to get some approximate promoted build number for the Known Failure Matching - it should fit in the build numbers specified in CRs (SR/MR). It would be best if the first (usual) string included that. Also this info should be readable from some java system property.


If it turns out that we cannot add this to the java version string, we need at least to put this info into some file which can be easily accessed.


It is not clear how to deal with modules and their versions when they would be fully supported. It may be a good idea to add a new command for the user like java -fullversion or java -versioninfo