CFV: New Project: Skara

[Vladimir Kozlov]

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
>