Call for Discussion: New Project: Skara -- investigating source code management options for the JDK sources

[joe darcy]

PS I presented a slide deck

http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~darcy/Presentations/ocw-2018-08-01-skara.pdf

and led a discussion about Skara on the first day of the OpenJDK 
Committers’ Workshop (http://openjdk.java.net/workshop). Within a few 
days of the workshop ending, I'll post a summary of the discussions to 
the list.

Cheers,

-Joe


On 7/26/2018 8:42 PM, joe darcy wrote:
> Hello,
>
> The source code management (SCM) system of a software project is a 
> fundamental piece of its infrastructure and workflows. Starting in 
> February 2008, the source code of different JDK releases and 
> supporting projects has been hosted in Mercurial repositories under 
> http://hg.openjdk.java.net/. Code reviews of JDK changes are typically 
> conducted as discussions in mailing lists over small patches sent to 
> one or more lists or over webrevs hosted on cr.openjdk.java.net. Since 
> 2008, many open source projects have successfully adopted more 
> efficient SCM and review tooling, in some cases provided by third 
> parties.
>
> In order to help OpenJDK contributors be more productive, both 
> seasoned committers and relative newcomers, the Skara project proposes 
> to investigate alternative SCM and code review options for the JDK 
> source code, including options based upon Git rather than Mercurial, 
> and including options hosted by third parties.
>
> The Skara project intends to build prototypes of hosting the JDK 12 
> sources under different providers.
>
> The evaluation criteria to consider include but are not limited to:
>
>     * Performance: time for clone operations from master repos, time 
> of local operations, etc.
>
>     * Space efficiency
>
>     * Usability in different geographies
>
>     * Support for common development environments such as Linux, Mac, 
> and Windows
>
>     * Able to easily host the entire history of the JDK and the 
> projected growth of its history over the next decade
>
>     * Support for general JDK code review practices
>
>     * Programmatic APIs to enable process assistance and automation of 
> review and processes
>
> If one or more prototypes indicate a different SCM arrangement offers 
> substantial improvements over the current situation, the Skara project 
> will shepherd a JEP to change the SCM for the JDK.
>
> I propose to lead the project with the initial reviewers including but 
> not limited to Tim Bell (tbell), Erik Duveblad (ehelin), Erik Joelsson 
> (erikj), Tiep Vo (tiep), Tony Squier (squierts), and Robin Westberg 
> (rwestberg).
>
> We suggest the build group sponsor this work.
>
> Changing the bug tracking system is out of scope for this project and 
> is *not* under consideration.
>
> Comments?
>
> Cheers,
>
> -Joe
>