Question: Where are JEPs discussed?

[Alex Buckley]

On 5/9/2019 4:55 AM, Andrew Haley wrote:
> On 5/8/19 2:37 PM, Adam Farley8 wrote:
>> Adam Farley8/UK/IBM wrote on 08/05/2019 14:35:59:
>>
>>> Does anyone know the answer to this question, raised on jep-changes:
>>>
>>> "What's a good way to stay informed about new JEPs and changes to
>>> existing JEPs?"
>
> I'm not sure there is a single place, really. There are OpenJDK
> projects, and occasionally one will turn into a JEP. JEPs are
> announced on the jdk-dev list. Detailed discussion is on the project
> list.

"JEPs are announced on the jdk-dev list." is misleading. There are 
announcements about JEPs on jdk-dev, sure, but the announcements are not 
about the creation of new JEPs [*]. The announcements are about the 
readiness of pre-existing candidate JEPs for a specific JDK release.

I suppose that a candidate JEP which has been kicked around on a Project 
or Group list for years, and is now being announced on jdk-dev for 
targeting, might be considered "new" in the sense of "new to the JDK 
Project". But it's also easy to imagine that a JEP which has been kicked 
around on a Project or Group list for months is "new" when, on reaching 
candidate status, it receives a number -- after all, the announcement on 
the Project or Group list is the only one which actually labels a JEP as 
"new" (e.g. "New candidate JEP: 341: Default CDS Archives").

All in all, it's best to be clear about the stage a JEP is in -- draft, 
candidate, and targeted are the main ones -- so that people don't assume 
that JDK N will have feature X just because a JEP issue exists in JBS.

Alex

[*] Very occasionally, there genuinely is an announcement on jdk-dev 
about the creation of a new JEP (e.g. JEPs 335 and 336 in June 2018) 
because the JEP will interest many Projects and Groups. And, very 
occasionally, JEP owners advertise their draft JEPs on jdk-dev, because 
of the wide readership. But it's the exception, not the rule, to see 
JEPs mentioned on jdk-dev before they're ready to target a release.