CFV: New Project: Panama

[John Rose]

I hereby propose the creation of Project Panama with myself (John
Rose) as the Lead and the HotSpot Group as the sponsoring Group.

In accordance with the OpenJDK guidelines [1], this project
will provide new connections between the Java virtual
machine and well-defined but "foreign" (non-Java) APIs,
including many interfaces commonly used by C programmers.
The project will provide an venue to incubate early work on
JEP 191[2] and similar enhancements, as discussed on my blog[3].

In short, the components developed in this project will support:

* native code and data access between the JVM and native APIs
* tooling for header file API extraction and API metadata storage
* wrapper interposition for specialized safety invariants and value transformations
* basic bindings for selected native APIs

The initial source of this project will be based on a clone of a JDK 9
repository, most specifically the hotspot, langtools, and jdk
sub-repositories.  We also plan (with appropriate permissions) to make
use of certain software components mentioned in JEP 191.  To host
components which may not immediately fit into the existing repository
structure, there will also be a "scratch" repository modeled on that
of Sumatra[4].

The initial Reviewers and Committers will be:

* David Chase (Reviewer, HotSpot/compiler)
* Mandy Chung (Reviewer, Core Libraries)
* Mike Duigou (Reviewer, Core Libraries)
* Vladimir Ivanov (Reviewer, HotSpot/compiler)
* Henry Jen (Committer, Core Libraries)
* Wayne Meissner (Committer, libffi/JNR)
* Charles Nutter (Reviewer, JRuby/JNR)
* Paul Sandoz (Committer, Core Libraries)
* David Simms (Committer, HotSpot/runtime)
* Attila Szegedi (Reviewer, Language Tools)
* Chris Thalinger (Reviewer, HotSpot/compiler)
* Bob Vandette (Reviewer, HotSpot/embedded)

(In parentheses are their prospective Panama role and a current
OpenJDK or other affiliation.  Reviewer status is assigned based on
previous review history.  Note that, per OpenJDK requirements[5],
authoring for this project requires a filed Oracle Contributor
Agreement.)

The project will maintain at least two mailing lists:

* panama-dev for developers (as usual)
* panama-spec-experts for specification issues only

For widest discussion of standardization questions, the specification
mailing list, distinct from the developer list, may include
participants from the Java Community Process who are not OpenJDK
contributors.  This list will exclude discussion of implementation
code, and may be moderated or otherwise restricted to meet this goal.

Change review will be determined by the Lead and a consensus of
Reviewers.  Review is expected to be loose initially but made more
strict, perhaps on a per-component basis as components become
candidates for integration into Java SE releases such as JDK 9.

Votes are due in two weeks, by 12:00 midnight June 18 2014 Pacific US Time
(18-06-2014 07:00 GMT).

Only current OpenJDK Members [6] are eligible to vote on this motion.
Votes must be cast in the open on the discuss list. Replying to this
message is sufficient if your mail program honors the Reply-To header.

For Lazy Consensus voting instructions, see [7].

Regards,

John Rose

[1] http://openjdk.java.net/projects/#new-project
[2] http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/191
[3] https://blogs.oracle.com/jrose/entry/the_isthmus_in_the_vm
[4] http://hg.openjdk.java.net/sumatra/sumatra-dev/scratch/
[5] http://openjdk.java.net/contribute/
[6] http://openjdk.java.net/census#members
[7] http://openjdk.java.net/projects/#new-project-vote