New IcedTea6 major release (1.7)

[Andrew John Hughes]

2009/12/15 Deepak Bhole <dbhole at redhat.com>:
> * Andrew John Hughes <gnu_andrew at member.fsf.org> [2009-12-13 10:18]:
>> 2009/12/10 Matthias Klose <doko at ubuntu.com>:
>> > On 10.12.2009 18:29, Andrew John Hughes wrote:
>> >>
>> >> I notice we haven't had a major IcedTea6 release since 1.6 in
>> >> September.  I think it's time to at least consider when we want to do
>> >> so.
>> >>
>> >> HEAD is currently on b17, whereas the previous releases are on b16.
>> >> The main feature in b17 was the switch to HotSpot 14 but this was
>> >> already supported by IcedTea6 anyway since 1.4.
>> >>
>> >> My personal preference would be to wait at least until b18, which will
>> >> include the Nimbus backport.  Nimbus is one of the major areas (if not
>> >> only) where OpenJDK still lags the proprietary Sun JDK.  The release
>> >> is fairly imminent; we've been discussing it at some length on
>> >> jdk6-dev:
>> >> http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/jdk6-dev/2009-December/000984.html
>> >>  However, I understand that others may want to delay this until 1.8 if
>> >> a 1.7 is desired sooner, prior to extensive testing of b18.
>> >
>> > from a distribution standpoint, b17 will likely not be released as part of a
>> > Linux distribution (all distros just had their releases), so I would be
>> > happy to concentrate on b18 instead.
>> >
>> >> What other features would people like to see in a release?  What
>> >> things are we waiting on?  The new plugin springs to mind.
>> >
>> > do you mean the icedtea npp plugin?
>> >
>>
>> I do.  Deepak, can you give us all a status update on the state of
>> both plugins including the bug mentioned by Andreas?
>
> The NP plugin is close to being functionally complete. I am currently
> concentrating on cross-browser testing with chromium, and firefox 3.5
> (most of the development I did was against 3.6 and there are some header
> issues across 3.5/3.6).
>
> I expect to make an alpha release before the holidays (24th Dec.) and a
> beta around 2-3rd week of Jan., followed by polishing+final release
> later on, depending on how many issues crop up.
>
> Cheers,
> Deepak
>
>>
>> >  Matthias
>> >
>>
>> Thanks,
>> --
>> Andrew :-)
>>
>> Free Java Software Engineer
>> Red Hat, Inc. (http://www.redhat.com)
>>
>> Support Free Java!
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>

Thanks for the summary.

So my proposal would be:

* A 1.7 release based on b17 in late December, with a major branch created now.
* A 1.8 release based on b18 in early February (for FOSDEM?)

Any objections?
-- 
Andrew :-)

Free Java Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc. (http://www.redhat.com)

Support Free Java!
Contribute to GNU Classpath and the OpenJDK
http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath
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