When building for distribution, zipped is a good solution. Binaries built with internal is suitable for use by developers, since they facilitate debugging, but should be stripped before distributed to end users.
The configure script is based on the autoconf framework, but in some details deviate from a normal autoconf configure script.
The configure script in the top level directory of OpenJDK is just a thin wrapper that calls common/autoconf/configure. This in turn provides functionality that is not easily expressed in the normal Autoconf framework, and then calls into the core of the configure script, which is the common/autoconf/generated-configure.sh file.
The configure script in the top level directory of OpenJDK is just a thin wrapper that calls make/autoconf/configure. This in turn provides functionality that is not easily expressed in the normal Autoconf framework, and then calls into the core of the configure script, which is the make/autoconf/generated-configure.sh file.
As the name implies, this file is generated by Autoconf. It is checked in after regeneration, to alleviate the common user to have to install Autoconf.
-The build system will detect if the Autoconf source files have changed, and will trigger a regeneration of common/autoconf/generated-configure.sh if needed. You can also manually request such an update by bash common/autoconf/autogen.sh.
The build system will detect if the Autoconf source files have changed, and will trigger a regeneration of make/autoconf/generated-configure.sh if needed. You can also manually request such an update by bash make/autoconf/autogen.sh.
If you make changes to the build system that requires a re-generation, note the following:
You must use exactly version 2.69 of autoconf for your patch to be accepted. This is to avoid spurious changes in the generated file. Note that Ubuntu 16.04 ships a patched version of autoconf which claims to be 2.69, but is not.