Release Schedule

[Andrew John Hughes]

On 11 June 2010 09:41, Matthias Klose <doko at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On 09.06.2010 11:50, Andrew John Hughes wrote:
>>
>> I have a number of new IcedTea releases in planning:
>>
>> * IcedTea6 1.6 branch:
>> http://icedtea.classpath.org/hg/release/icedtea6-1.6/shortlog/
>>
>> There will be a 1.6.3 release as the branch has a lot of patches not
>> yet released including security updates.  It is ready for testing now.
>>  I have a few more patches to look into, but it's otherwise ready.
>> doko reported an issue with Zero a while back, but I've not heard
>> anything since.
>
> I didn't look at these anymore.  For my liking, the 1.6 branch has too many
> build system patches backported, which apparently did break some
> configurations.  I'd like to avoid these kind of backports for more recent
> branches.
>

Can you be more specific?  The only build changes added to that branch
were necessary fixes to make it build (including updating hs11 support
which was broken with the initial release).

>> * IcedTea6 1.7 branch:
>> http://icedtea.classpath.org/hg/release/icedtea6-1.7/shortlog/
>>
>> There will be a 1.7.4 release to update the plugin with recent bug
>> fixes in 1.8 and beyond.  This will be a plugin-only release.  Most of
>> the patches have been backported (up to 1.8) and so this is also
>> eligible for testing now.
>>
>> * IcedTea7: http://icedtea.classpath.org/hg/release/icedtea/shortlog
>>
>> There will be based on b89 (Milestone 7).  I see from
>> http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk7/milestones/ that we've
>> apparently just reached Milestone 8, but I've seen nothing from Oracle
>> on either milestone 6, 7 or 8 and I don't believe 8 is feature
>> complete; I've seen no commits relating to closures for one thing.  As
>> you may have seen from the IcedTea7 commits, I've been backporting
>> over six months worth of work on IcedTea6 to IcedTea7 over the last
>> few weeks.  There's still some to go, so I'll let the list know when
>> it's worth testing.   But it should be soon.
>
> Build patches are likely needed for some of the more obscure Debian builds.
> if "soon" is too soon, then I'd like to make these build changes on a 1.7
> branch as well. A release date after the IcedTea6 releases would be
> appreciated.

'Soon' is referring to the backporting of patches from IcedTea6, not
the release.  There are now just five left to check (some of which may
not be forwardported).  All the plugin and Shark stuff is done, but
I've no idea how well this works in practice because Shark changes
were bundled together with Zero changes, with no bug IDs (if they were
even upstreamed at all).  Zero is upstream in both OpenJDK6 and
OpenJDK7 now, so local copies should preferably be dropped.

The IcedTea7 release will be when it's ready, and I certainly prefer
we ship something that works for you as well.  That said, I'd prefer
it to be sooner rather than later, as both IcedTea6 and OpenJDK7 will
move forward while we stabilise, and we don't want to release
something too outdated.

This note was to say we are (just about) ready for testing rather than
release.  I still have to make the CACAO and VisualVM changes as
mentioned below.  I expect Zero to be building by release.  Shark has
never done a full bootstrap on any IcedTea7 release (in fact, I only
think I've seen it done once on any version of IcedTea) so, while it
would be nice to have, it's not a regression and thus not a release
blocker.

>
>> A couple of changes I plan for this release are updating the CACAO
>> build to use the development branch: see
>> http://server.complang.tuwien.ac.at/cgi-bin/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=139
>> and dropping VisualVM, which I believe is broken anyway.  VisualVM
>> will be migrated to its own repository.
>>
>> I'd like to make the same VisualVM change with IcedTea6 HEAD in due
>> course.
>
> agreed. Did we hear back from VisualVM upstream to provide a visualvm
> project on IcedTea.classpath.org?

I haven't heard anything.

>
> Is there some commitment from the CACAO project to keep the OpenJDK build
> working?
>

They suggested bumping to the development line, if you read the bug.
Hopefully us testing it will push them into doing a new release.
0.99.4 is becoming more and more unmaintainable.  I got it to build,
but not bootstrap.  The fix for that issue is apparently in the
rewrite.

>> As to IcedTea6 HEAD generally, I don't think we're ready for
>> another release yet so I doubt we'll have a release based on b19.  The
>> only major change there was an upgrade to hs16, which we provided as
>> an option in 1.8 anyway.  I'd rather we wait for b20 and then begin
>> preparing a release, stabilising on hs17, which will bring us in line
>> with the proprietary JDK6.
>
> skipping b20 sounds fine. I personally do not want to work on b19 anymore.
>

We're skipping b19 (I imagine you meant 'skipping to b20'), the
current IcedTea6 HEAD and moving to the new b20 release.

>> For 1.8, I will backport any plugin fixes that are post-1.8 as I do
>> them for 1.7, but I'll leave releases up to the release manager, doko.
>
> please feel free to apply these to the 1.8 branch. Trying for a 1.8.1
> release around the same time as for the 1.7.4 release.
>

Done (I took your questions on IRC about them the other day as
indication that you wanted them too).  The 1.7 branch is ready for
testing and will be released as soon as it seems ready.

>  Matthias
>



-- 
Andrew :-)

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

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