Copyright update tedium

Joseph D. Darcy joe.darcy at oracle.com
Mon Dec 9 20:39:31 UTC 2024


FWIW, when I've thought about the topic of copyright and licenses 
before, I think there are several aspects that can be separated.

One is a syntactic-only check, as the in-flight Skara PR may provide. I 
think having a syntactic-only check is Skara is reasonable.

A semantic check is "does file F have the proper license for its role in 
the project?" For example, GPL vs GPL w the classpath exception or 
"@test /nodynamiccopyright/" for certain langtools tests, etc.

These checks are complicated enough and have enough change over time 
that I don't think they are appropriate for Skara. However, they could 
be accommodated by check/test that lived in the repository and was 
evolved with the repository.

-Joe

On 12/9/2024 11:32 AM, Archie Cobbs wrote:
> OK thanks. Apologies for getting confused, I'm not familiar with the 
> skara code so I'm not always sure what I'm looking at.
>
>     I personally think Skara shouldn't do that, but it is a topic that
>     might be worth discussing for a future Enhancement.
>
>
> I think it's a good idea, but only to the extent that "the right thing 
> to do" is well-defined and algorithmically decidable (so the 
> likelihood of false positives is virtually zero).
>
> There seems to be some debate about whether copyright updates are 
> required for "significant" changes or all changes; only the latter 
> case is "well-defined" so this idea would depend on confirmation of an 
> "all changes" policy - that is, unless someone can encode 
> "significant" into an algorithm.
>
> In other words, it seems like a sufficiently conservative 
> implementation (zero false positives) would be a net win.
>
> -Archie
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 9, 2024 at 1:16 PM Kevin Rushforth 
> <kevin.rushforth at oracle.com> wrote:
>
>     No, The Skara PR in question isn't proposing to do this. Rather it
>     is checking that _if_ the Copyright header is updated, it is
>     syntactically correct.
>
>     It would be an item for further discussion to have Skara actually
>     get into the business of whether the copyright header should be
>     updated and what the copyright year(s) should be. I personally
>     think Skara shouldn't do that, but it is a topic that might be
>     worth discussing for a future Enhancement.
>
>     -- Kevin
>
>
>     On 12/9/2024 10:37 AM, Archie Cobbs wrote:
>>     Bleh, ignore my comment. I didn't realize the PR#1702 you
>>     referenced is already proposing doing this!
>>
>>     -Archie
>>
>>     On Mon, Dec 9, 2024 at 10:45 AM Archie Cobbs
>>     <archie.cobbs at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>         Thanks for working on this... something of a thankless task :)
>>
>>         I'm sure you've considered this but I'll ask anyway. Would it
>>         make (more or less) sense to try and enforce the policy on
>>         the front-end?
>>
>>         By that I mean adding another checkbox requirement to skara's
>>         handling of PR's: "🔲 Change must update copyright dates
>>         where applicable"
>>
>>         The check could start out being conservative:
>>
>>           * Only applies to files with certain extensions and/or
>>             matching some filter list
>>           * Only applies to files containing a recognizable copyright
>>             text line
>>
>>         -Archie
>>
>>         On Mon, Dec 9, 2024 at 7:06 AM Magnus Ihse Bursie
>>         <magnus.ihse.bursie at oracle.com> wrote:
>>
>>             I felt responsibility for the .github files, and wanted
>>             to check if there were more build system files needed
>>             updating. So I ran a more comprehensive script, and
>>             discovered a *lot* more files that needed updating. Like
>>             a thousand or so...
>>
>>             I have opened a series of issues starting at
>>             https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8345793 and going up
>>             to https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8345805 to update
>>             these headers.
>>
>>             I agree, this should be automated. We're starting to
>>             slowly get there, see
>>             https://github.com/openjdk/skara/pull/1702 for a first step.
>>
>>             /Magnus
>>
>>             On 2024-12-03 16:45, Archie Cobbs wrote:
>>>             Dumb question...
>>>
>>>             It seems like the thing with updating copyright years in
>>>             source files could be better automated. At least,
>>>             couldn't there be a test that fails if you forget?
>>>
>>>             FWIW my little updater script says that these files
>>>             still need to be updated to 2024:
>>>
>>>             .github/actions/config/action.yml
>>>             .github/actions/do-build/action.yml
>>>             .github/actions/get-bootjdk/action.yml
>>>             .github/actions/get-bundles/action.yml
>>>             .github/actions/get-msys2/action.yml
>>>             .github/scripts/gen-build-failure-report.sh
>>>             .github/scripts/gen-test-summary.sh
>>>             .github/workflows/build-cross-compile.yml
>>>             .github/workflows/test.yml
>>>             src/java.base/share/classes/jdk/internal/org/xml/sax/Attributes.java
>>>             src/java.base/share/classes/jdk/internal/org/xml/sax/InputSource.java
>>>             src/java.base/share/classes/jdk/internal/org/xml/sax/SAXException.java
>>>             src/java.base/share/classes/jdk/internal/org/xml/sax/SAXParseException.java
>>>             src/java.base/share/classes/jdk/internal/org/xml/sax/XMLReader.java
>>>             src/java.base/share/classes/jdk/internal/org/xml/sax/helpers/DefaultHandler.java
>>>             src/java.base/share/classes/jdk/internal/platform/Metrics.java
>>>             test/hotspot/jtreg/compiler/vectorization/runner/BasicIntOpTest.java
>>>             test/hotspot/jtreg/compiler/vectorization/runner/BasicLongOpTest.java
>>>             test/hotspot/jtreg/compiler/whitebox/DeoptimizeFramesTest.java
>>>
>>>             -Archie
>>>
>>>             -- 
>>>             Archie L. Cobbs
>>
>>
>>
>>         -- 
>>         Archie L. Cobbs
>>
>>
>>
>>     -- 
>>     Archie L. Cobbs
>
>
>
> -- 
> Archie L. Cobbs
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