Should we rename the MASTER forest?

[Mark Reinhold]

> Date: Thu, 08 Nov 2007 14:02:23 -0800
> From: Neal Gafter <neal at gafter.com>

> On Nov 8, 2007 1:54 PM, Mark Reinhold <mr at sun.com> wrote:
>> Transposing this to Mercurial: When JDK 7 ships then the jdk7 master
>> forest will be archived, and work on JDK 8 will begin in a jdk8 forest,
>> which will initially be a clone of jdk7.
> 
> One problem with this approach is that work on the next release cannot begin
> until the powers that control these workspaces are ready for work to begin
> on the next major release. Within Sun, that has resulted in engineers being
> unable to make significant changes for the following release until some time
> after the current release is completed.

No, it has resulted in Sun engineers not being able to get QA to test
their changes for the next release until the QA team is finished with
the release that's about to ship.  Sun engineers have always been able
to work ahead of the schedule by working in their own private TeamWare
workspaces, or in shared group workspaces.

>                                         This is particularly painful during
> the final ramp-down months of a release, when only critical changes are
> accepted.

All the more reason for each release to have its very own forest.  It's
much easier to ramp down change in an entire forest rather than just in
a particular branch of that forest.

- Mark