CFV: New Project: CRaC

[Mario Torre]

Vote: Abstain.

I do think any OpenJDK contributor should have the rights to request a space for experimentation, and I really like Anton’s work and the initiative, in principle, seems extremely interesting if executed properly.

However, like others I feel that there was not enough engagement and not enough discussion to put the basis for a project just yet. It has been mentioned that there are others exploring this problem space and this highlights the need to have a common infrastructure, however some of the comments coming from developers of said projects were largely ignored or dismissed even if they did offer some good points of discussion, so that doesn’t seem consequential.

Also, as was again mentioned already, some more people could contribute to the discussion, but the timing has bee so short, especially considering we're at the end of July/beginning of August, and many of us had noticed the project discussion only while on vacation (including me) without much chance to contribute.

I think this project has the opportunity to be extremely promising, but it needs to go beyond the small set of original committers and include more groups, and engage in a bit more discussion to better define its premises. In my opinion, but apparently also in the opinion of others here, the overlapping with other groups is significant, and it's a concern for me that this is not recognised, for this reason I suggest to take a little extra time to reflect back on the problems we're trying to solve before requesting a formal project, and maintain the goal to commit to have an inclusive and wider audience of JVM and core JDK developers, including the security group.

Also, I really, really encourage you to change the name :) but that’s probably just me being pedantic.

Cheers,
Mario


> On 30. Jul 2021, at 21:17, Anton Kozlov <akozlov at azul.com> wrote:
> 
> I hereby propose the creation of the CRaC Project with myself, Anton Kozlov,
> as the Lead and the HotSpot Group as the sponsoring Group.
> 
> The CRaC (Coordinated Restore at Checkpoint) [1] project will research
> coordination of Java programs with mechanisms to checkpoint (make an image of,
> snapshot) a Java instance while it is executing.  Restoring from the image
> could be a solution to some of the problems with the start-up and warm-up
> times.  The primary aim of the project is to develop a new standard
> mechanism-agnostic API to notify Java programs about the checkpoint and restore
> events.  Other research activities will include, but will not be limited to,
> integration with existing checkpoint/restore mechanisms and development of new
> ones, changes to JVM and JDK to make images smaller and ensure they are
> correct.
> 
> The existing proof-of-concept implementation based on the OpenJDK [2] will be a
> starting point of the project.
> 
> I work at Azul developing JVM and JDK, focusing on bug fixing, support of new
> platforms, and start-up/warm-up optimizations.  I'm a co-author of JEP-391 and
> author of the CRaC proof-of-concept implementation.
> 
> Initial Committers and Reviewers are:
> Volker Simonis (Committer)
> Anton Kozlov (Reviewer)
> 
> Votes are due by Friday, 13 August 2021, 20:00:00 GMT.
> 
> Only current OpenJDK Members [3] 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 [4].
> 
> Anton Kozlov
> 
> [1] https://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/discuss/2021-July/005862.html
> [2] https://github.com/CRaC/jdk
> [3] https://openjdk.java.net/census#members
> [4] https://openjdk.java.net/projects/#new-project-vote
> 

—
Mario Torre
Java Champion and OpenJDK contributor

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