OpenJDK bug database: Status update

[mark.reinhold at oracle.com]

Last October I announced Oracle's intent to deploy a pilot JIRA instance
for use by the OpenJDK Community within a few months and then, if all
goes well, to migrate the JDK bug corpus from Sun's creaky old legacy
internal system to a public JIRA instance by mid-2012 [1].

Following that announcement Iris Clark initiated and moderated the first
of a planned series of discussions about the design and configuration of
the system [2][3].  In parallel Mohan Pakkurti and his team have been
working to implement the pilot system; this includes configuring JIRA,
acquiring and provisioning hardware, and getting the myriad internal
approvals required from various parts of Oracle.

All of this work is, unfortunately, taking much longer than anticipated.
We remain committed to the ultimate goal of making a public JIRA instance
available, but at this point we don't think we can deliver it in the next
few months.  In the meantime it's now mid-March, and the legacy internal
system is going to be shut down in late July.

Faced with these constraints, we must change our plan.  Rather than make
a public pilot system available first, we're initially going to migrate
the JDK bug corpus from the legacy internal system to an internal JIRA
instance.  Our goal is to complete that transition by mid-June, and in
order to do that we've assigned several more Oracle engineers to the
effort.  We'll move to an external public JIRA instance some time later,
once the hardware is in place and the necessary approvals are obtained.

In order to speed the migration process the initial JIRA instances, both
internal and external, will not be as deeply customized as envisioned in
Iris's draft [3].  Some of the ideas in the draft will no doubt influence
the design of the initial systems; the remainder will be reconsidered
after the public system is available.

I understand that this news will be disappointing to many; I'm not very
happy about it myself.  It's unfortunate that there won't be a public
pilot system prior to the migration, that deep customization work will
have to wait, and that the public system most likely won't be available
by mid-2012.  It will be far worse for all concerned, however, if there
is not even a working internal bug system for the JDK by the time that
Sun's legacy system is shut down.  This new plan therefore places the
highest priority on migrating off of that system.  Oracle remains firmly
committed to making a public system available as soon as possible after
that.

- Mark


[1] http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/announce/2011-October/000112.html
[2] http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/discuss/2011-December/002237.html
[3] http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~iris/jira/JIRAforOpenJDK.html