DRAFT PROPOSAL: Provide date and time library from JSR-310

[Stephen Colebourne]

Well, it seems I'll be the first to suggest a JSR derived project for
the challenge. Hopefully the JSR/Challenge combo will be acceptable to 
any legal people:



                               DRAFT PROPOSAL

The provision of a date and time library suitable for inclusion in OpenJDK

                               Stephen Colebourne

1. Summary
----------

Two of the least liked APIs of the JDK are those of Date and Calendar. 
The classes are mutable when they shouldn't be, have unusual performance 
characteristics and months where January is zero.

Having previously tackled this issue via Joda-Time [1] I am now co-spec 
lead of JSR-310 Date and Time API. This JSR is developing, using an open 
process a new date and time API targetting the Java 7 release.


2. Goals and deliverables
-------------------------

The goal of this project is to provide a complete working Reference 
Implementation of JSR-310 as agreed by the JSR-310 working group [2].

It should be noted that the JSR is unlikely to be complete within the 
timeframe of the challenge. As such, the goal for this project is to 
complete the RI as required by the working group. Although a commitment 
cannot be made here, it is intended that this should be used to publish 
the RI for the JCP Early Draft Review milestone.

JSR-310 and this RI project shall cover as a minimum - immutable classes 
for timestamps, dates, times, datetimes, timezone, timezone offset, 
alternate calendar systems, duration, period, interval, formatting and 
parsing.


3. Previous work
----------------

Work on the RI has already started [2] and continues to guide the 
working group. This project represents the continuation of that development.

The Reference Implementation is BSD licensed. It is not proposed to 
change that as it is compatible with the GPL license.


4. Deliverables
---------------

The deliverables are:

1) The source code of the Reference Implementation of JSR-310.

2) The source code of any existing JDK classes modified as part of JSR-310.

3) Source code documentation in the form of javadoc suitable for 
inclusion in the JDK.

4) Tests with 90%+ test coverage.

It is expected that the deliverables will correspond to the JCP Early 
Draft Review stage.


5. Dependencies on Sun
----------------------

There are no known dependencies on Sun over and above those Sun has 
already agreed to with the JSR-310 working group.


6. Developer
------------

Stephen Colebourne has worked with Java since 1997 and in Open Source 
since 2000. He is a Member of the Apache Software Foundation, creator 
and project lead of Joda-Time [1], creator of Kijaro [3] and co-author 
of FCM closures. He is currently a hands-on architect at SITA ATS Ltd 
building airline e-commerce systems.


[1] http://joda-time.sourceforge.net
[2] http://jsr-310.dev.java.net
[3] http://kijaro.dev.java.net