CFV: New Project: Skara

[Stuart Marks]

Vote: yes

On 8/29/18 10:58 AM, joe darcy wrote:
> I hereby propose the creation of the Skara Project with Joe Darcy as the Lead 
> and the Build Group as the sponsoring Group.
> 
> 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.
> 
> Skara previously had a call for discussion 
> (http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/discuss/2018-July/004801.html) and was a 
> topic at the OpenJDK Committers’ Workshop 
> (http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~darcy/Presentations/ocw-2018-08-01-skara.pdf). A 
> range of passionate opinions were expressed regarding the choice of SCM for the 
> JDK, but the prototype imports of the JDK sources to hosting providers:
> 
>      https://github.com/Project-Skara/jdk.git
>      https://gitlab.com/jddarcy/jdk.git
> 
> have demonstrated much shorter clone times, on the order of one to three minutes 
> as compared to fifteen minutes to over a half hour from hg.openjdk.java.net.
> 
> The envisioned future iterations of prototypes could explore how to adapt JDK 
> development practices to better conform to conventions on different SCMs. For 
> example, some syntax changes in JDK commit messages would work more naturally 
> with git tooling. Such prototypes would be published and made available for 
> comment.
> 
> Joe is  a reviewer in the JDK project, the lead of the CSR (Compatibility & 
> Specification Review) group (http://openjdk.java.net/groups/csr/), previous lead 
> of Project Coin (http://openjdk.java.net/projects/coin/), initial moderator and 
> inaugural release manager for OpenJDK 6, and was the lead for JEP 296: 
> Consolidate the JDK Forest into a Single Repository 
> (http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/296).
> 
> Initial reviewers are Tim Bell (tbell), Joe Darcy (darcy), Erik Duveblad 
> (ehelin), Erik Joelsson (erikj), Mark Reinhold (mr), Tony Squier (squierts), 
> Tiep Vo (tiep), and Robin Westberg (rwestberg).
> 
> Votes are due by September 12, 11 am Pacific Time.
> 
> Only current OpenJDK Members [1] are eligible to vote on this motion. Votes must 
> be cast in the open on the discuss list. Replying to this message is sufficient 
> if your mail program honors the Reply-To header.
> 
> For Lazy Consensus voting instructions, see [2].
> 
> -Joe Darcy
> 
> [1] http://openjdk.java.net/census#members
> [2] http://openjdk.java.net/projects/#new-project-vote
>