How to host HS14 stable? (Was: RFC: Change name of default HotSpot to 'default')

[Mark Reinhold]

> Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2009 18:17:27 +0000
> From: Andrew John Hughes <gnu_andrew at member.fsf.org>

> 2009/2/20 james.melvin at sun.com:
>> The basic reasoning behind the HS14 fork is two-fold...
>> 
>> ...
> 
> I quite agree with the reasons for the branch, that in itself is a
> very sensible approach.  My issue was with why the stable branch, when
> created, was not simply done publicly.  It's not like anyone can just
> commit anything they want to it anyway, and a stable HotSpot is
> valuable for others outside Sun.

As I understand it, the real reason the fork of HS14 wasn't done in the
open is fairly prosaic: Sun's proprietary 6uX update releases are still
based on TeamWare, our old internal SCM, rather than Mercurial.  When a
HotSpot "Express" snapshot is taken from JDK 7 it's first converted into
TeamWare, and that's where the stabilization work is done.

Joe Darcy has been working with the HotSpot team to revise this practice
so that such work can take place in the open.  Hopefully he'll have some
news on that soon.

- Mark