Open sourcing JDK 9 ARM ports

[Bob Vandette]

As the Java SE Mobile and Embedded Lead at Oracle, I'm pleased 
to be able to let you know about Oracle's plans to open source 
its Linux ARM 32 and 64 bit ports of Oracle Java SE for JDK 9 
in the OpenJDK Community.

Before we go ahead, I'd like to provide some details to the 
contributors of the Aarch32 Port Project, and start discussing 
the best path forward for contributing our code.

What Oracle plans to open source:
---------------------------------

Oracle plans to open source a JDK 9 Port capable of being
run on popular 32 and 64 bit ARM processors.

This implementation provides Client, Server and Minimal Hotspot 
VMs hosted within a single hotspot/src/cpu/arm source tree.

In addition, our implementation provides the ability to build 
Linux ARM interpreter runtimes statically for platforms that 
do not support dynamic code generation.

How we plan to contribute the code:
-----------------------------------

Our ultimate goal is to integrate our JDK 9 port into the mainline
repositories in a JDK 9 update release.

So there are a few different options for contributing this code.  
We could either try to create a new OpenJDK Project for this port 
or we could try to contribute this code to an existing Project.

In the latter case, the obvious choices would be the Aarch32, Aarch64 
or the Mobile Project.  Among them, the Aarch32 Project would be our 
first choice.  So I'd like to know how the Aarch32 Project Contributors 
feel about this proposal.

Challenges:
-----------

There are a few potential challenges ahead if you all agree that it's 
a good idea to contribute our implementation to the Aarch32 project.

  1. Our code provides both a 32-bit and a 64-bit implementation.
  2. Currently there are no Oracle Commiters/Reviewers in this Project. 
  3. Our development is focused solely on JDK 9 rather than JDK 8.

I look forward to your feedback on how to best move ahead.

Thanks,
Bob Vandette
Java SE Mobile and Embedded Lead