CFV: New Project: Developer's Guide

[Jesper Wilhelmsson]

I hereby propose the creation of the Developer's Guide Project with myself,
Jesper Wilhelmsson, as the lead and the Core Libraries, Compiler, and HotSpot
Groups as the sponsoring Groups.

The suggested project has been out for discussion on discuss at openjdk.java.net
for two weeks [1]. It was well-received and I haven't noted any concerns with
creating the project in that discussion.

The initial goal of the project would be to create up-to-date guidelines for
OpenJDK development and contributions. The intent is to update the existing
OpenJDK Developer's Guide [2] which hasn't been updated since 2012. Parts of
the existing guide are in need of updates while other parts are yet to be
written. The initial source code for this project will be based on the current
OpenJDK Developer's Guide.

In more recent years some process related information has been published on the
OpenJDK wiki [3], but this information was never reviewed or approved by the
community. Even though large parts of this information may be accurate, it
needs to go through proper review before it can be seen as official guidelines
for OpenJDK development.

Once the initial goal has been reached the project will transition into a
maintenance project to keep the OpenJDK Developer's Guide up to date.

The OpenJDK Developer's Guide is intended to contain tutorial style texts that
give examples and step-by-step directions for common parts of the development
process. Strict rules for OpenJDK development are better suited to a process
JEP. The development of such a JEP is outside of the scope of this project but
will be developed as part of a separate effort in parallel.

I (Jesper Wilhelmsson) am part of the Java Platform Group at Oracle and have
been working with virtual machine development since 2001. My initial focus was
on memory management and garbage collection but over the last few years I've
been more involved in gatekeeping and process questions around the OpenJDK.
I authored several of the guides available on the OpenJDK HotSpot wiki and I
regularly give talks on how to contribute to the OpenJDK.

Initial committers of the Developer's Guide Project include Mark Reinhold (mr),
Iris Clark (iris), and Jesper Wilhelmsson (jwilhelm). A complete list will be
provided to the registrar at the successful conclusion of this CFV.

The project will host at least one mailing list, guide-dev at openjdk.java.net,
for discussions and reviews of changes.

Votes are due by 5pm PDT on Tuesday April 14 2020.

Only current OpenJDK Members [4] 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 [5].

Thanks,
/Jesper

[1] https://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/discuss/2020-March/005298.html
[2] http://openjdk.java.net/guide/
[3] https://wiki.openjdk.java.net/
[4] http://openjdk.java.net/census#members
[5] http://openjdk.java.net/projects/#new-project-vote