Task for an aspiring JDK contributor

Julian Waters tanksherman27 at gmail.com
Fri Nov 18 18:01:32 UTC 2022


Hi Andreas,

Ignoring the proposed change, you'd first have to be a verified
contributor, which requires signing the agreement at
https://oca.opensource.oracle.com/ where all you'd need to do is follow the
instructions there. I'll put this up front: Be prepared for an atrociously
long wait to have the contributor agreement approved, but once you're
greenlit you can then proceed with creating a Pull Request against the
repository like you'd normally do at https://github.com/openjdk/jdk

The JDK has the extra strict requirement that sets it apart from other
OpenJDK repositories (for obvious reasons) that Pull Requests must be
associated with a corresponding entry at https://bugs.openjdk.org/ which is
done by setting the title of the Pull Request to the title of the entry.
For example, if the issue you are addressing in your Pull Request is the
one at https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8288293, titled "Decouple
Compiler used from OS", with the entry number of JDK-8288293, your Pull
Request title should be "8288293: Decouple Compiler used from OS", and the
integration system (codenamed Skara) will automatically take care of the
rest for you and notify reviewers. Do note that it will only do so if the
Pull Request is NOT a draft! All you'd need to do then is be patient and
listen to the integration system's instructions, and/or any feedback and
guidance from reviewers at that point.

You can't just create entries in the tracker as you wish- For that you need
to apply for the position of Author, which you do by emailing the JDK's
Project Lead (Who is Mark Reinhold, as of now) a request for Author in the
JDK Project. The requirements for applying for this are actually much less
daunting than you might be expecting: Just have 2 already approved and
integrated Pull Requests to the JDK, the links to which you must include in
your email when requesting for the position. After another very long wait,
since Project Leads are typically very busy, you will get several emails to
complete your registration as Author, just follow the instructions there
once you do get them, after which you will finally be given an Author's
account that allows you to create said entries in the tracker. Without the
Author position, you'd be limited to only creating Pull Requests for issues
others have already opened, and would be unable to open your own Pull
Requests for review. (There's also the position of Committer, which you can
also attain later on, but that's not relevant now)

Now, as an Author myself I could very well help you circumvent that last
part until you become an Author yourself, but it's important to note that
you should definitely discuss the change you're planning on the relevant
mailing list before actually doing so. Is the change you have in mind
actually a good idea? I'm not an stdlib developer, so I can't comment on
your Array API plans, but from experience I am aware that changes to that
particular part of the JDK are subject to exceptionally strict scrutiny
(even for an already pretty strict Project such as the JDK), so you should
send this idea to core-libs-dev and discuss there first, before you fully
commit to having an entry created in the tracker.

Let me know if you have any other queries, and good luck in your future
endeavours as a JDK Contributor!

best regards.
Julian
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