Openjdk-8-jdk is a debug build

[Silvio Bierman]

The current openjdk-8-jdk package for Ubuntu 14.10 installs a version of java that reports "openjdk version 1.8.0_01-internal-fastdebug" as its version. This is a debug build that works painfully slow. Using it to run Eclipse and do stuff like building projects or even open source everything takes about five times as long as when using openjdk-7-jdk.

This package should not contain a debug build, if at all a debug version should be in a separate package.

Expected: getting a normal production build to run Java programs for normal use.

Instead: II got a debug build that runs Java programs painfully slow (and probably with a lot of memory overhead although I did not check that).

silvio@mizuno:~$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu Utopic Unicorn (development branch)
Release: 14.10

silvio@mizuno:~$ apt-cache policy openjdk-8-jdk
openjdk-8-jdk:
  Installed: 8u20-b26-1ubuntu1
  Candidate: 8u20-b26-1ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 8u20-b26-1ubuntu1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ utopic/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Saikrishna Arcot (saiarcot895)]

The general Debian/Ubuntu packaging process involves (ideally) a release build with debug symbols or a debug build, and then the debug symbols are split into a separate file that would be in -dbg. From what I can tell, this has happened already; the openjdk-8-dbg package install size is 136 MB. In the case of this package, it seems the built files are closer to a release build with debug symbols than a debug build. See https://blogs.oracle.com/kto/entry/mustang_jdk_6_0_fastdebug for more information on what fastdebug is.

That being said, it doesn't look like OpenJDK 7 was built with the fastdebug option, it may be why this is being exhibited now rather than before.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Silvio Bierman (sbierman)]

Yes I read that fastdebug-info a long time ago and IMHO what is says about speed is incorrect. In Java 6 fastdebug was horribly slow as well and things do not seem to have changed.

I downloaded and installed Java 8 from Oracle and that does run as expected. It seemed to be slightly faster than OpenJDK 7 on some benchmarks I did but the difference was very small.

[Silvio Bierman (sbierman)]

This has been resolved. Current version of openjdk-8-jdk "8u40~b04-2" is a normal production build which performs as expected. I propose to close this issue.

[Oleg Chirukhin (olegchir)]

Silvio, just want to mention that "u40" versions are unstable. It should be released in march 2015. Current stable (GA) version is u20, it was released in August.

Here's OpenJDK timeline for both branches:
http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk8u/releases/8u20.html
http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk8u/releases/8u40.html

I'm really worried that Utopic use an unstable version: "https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/utopic/+package/openjdk-8-jdk" is "8u40~b04-2" instead of "8u20~b26"

"performs as expected"
Are you an OpenJDK developer? (you're not on http://openjdk.java.net/census)
Do you have any formal tests, which show that "GA - March 2015" is a mistake ?

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

fixed for 15.04