Update on bug system for OpenJDK (web-discuss)

[David Herron]

An observation ...

This thread is about the OpenJDK bug system - not the Java SE bug system (
bugs.sun.com)

The Java SE bug system has to do with the binary product shipped by Oracle.
 The OpenJDK bug system has to do with the sources maintained by the OpenJDK
project.  These are two separate things.  The Java SE product has the
zillions of users and is the one which draws all these bug reports discussed
in recent emails.

Hm..

The people at Oracle clearly will have an issue distinguishing Java SE and
OpenJDK bugs ... Ideally the Oracle team will have a single bug system to
work with that handles both Java SE and OpenJDK bugs

Bugs should arrive to OpenJDK's pile via these channels:-

   - The "good bugs" arriving via bugs.sun.com
   - The bugs found by Oracle's Java SE SQE team (my former colleagues)
   - bug submission by the OpenJDK community
   - bugs sent upstream (to OpenJDK) from downstream distros (Ubuntu,
   Fedora,  ..etc..)
   - Ditto with projects like IcedTea - though, how does one distinguish
   IcedTea from "downstream distros" or is it the same thing


The one thing of the Oracle team being able to treat bugs as both Java SE
**AND** OpenJDK bugs ... well, that sounds tough to implement.  The bug
system we had at Sun wouldn't have been capable of this.

The other part here, accepting bugs from downstream projects, might not be
terribly hard.  I'm sure it's already being done by hand where liaison
people enter bugs from their distro bug system into OpenJDK's.  But I recall
having talked with several people about any kind of automated upstreaming or
even a method of concrete linkage between bugs in a distro's bug system and
OpenJDK's.  At that time there was talk among some of a protocol for
exchanging bug data between bug systems.  But that nothing had been
implemented.

FWIW I poked at this problem a bit while still in the team at Sun and the
above was dredged from my memory of the model I'd been developing in my
mind.

+ David Herron
http://davidherron.com/