HotSpot Style Guide change process

[Thomas Stüfe]

On Wed, Dec 2, 2020 at 12:04 PM Kim Barrett <kim.barrett at oracle.com> wrote:

> > On Dec 1, 2020, at 11:20 PM, Vladimir Kozlov <vladimir.kozlov at oracle.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Okay. I did not realize that we are already using "rough consensus" in
> our processes.
> > Thank you, Kim, for pointers. I take back my original suggestion.
> >
> > My next suggestion is to change [rough consensus] link to
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7282 which is used by Vulnerability group
> and also referenced by Wikipedia. It is more formal and will be available
> for longer time.
>
> That seems reasonable.
> https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8257589
>
> > On 12/1/20 5:25 PM, David Holmes wrote:
> >> Hi Kim,
> >> "rough consensus" has good precedents and is something we should follow
> here IMO. OpenJDK by-laws are for the formal parts of the OpenJDK processes
> themselves, not for everything single thing done under the OpenJDK banner.
> >> Cheers,
> >> David
> >> On 1/12/2020 4:43 pm, Kim Barrett wrote:
> >>> Even if we don't change, and especially if we do, some further
> refinement of
> >>> the mechanics may be needed. I think the current mechanics may have a
> >>> problem that the request shows up in one's mailbox looking pretty much
> like
> >>> an ordinary RFR. When I was originally thinking about that text we
> were in a
> >>> world of pure email change requests, and the document was still a wiki
> page.
> >>> With the move of the document to the jdk repository and the move to
> github
> >>> and PRs + Skara support for changes, the mechanics are different. It
> might
> >>> be better if it could be subject tagged differently, as we do with
> Call for
> >>> Vote emails. There are probably things we could do about that, if
> others
> >>> agree that's a problem. Or maybe some of you see other problems?
>
> I’d still like to get some feedback on the mechanics.  Is what I’ve done
> for a couple
> of changes working for folks?  That is, is using a normal github PR for
> the change,
> with “yes” votes via review approvals, good enough?  Are there changes
> that would
> make this work better?  I’m mostly worried that we seem to be getting more
> or less
> the same small group of people.  I can’t tell if that’s because others
> aren’t bothering,
> or are they not noticing.  We want high visibility on changes to the Style
> Guide.
>
>
Hi Kim,

For me, it is not lack of interest. But changes to the style guide often
drift to the bottom of the pile since there is so much to do, and
discussing them takes time. hotspot-dev being out of commission for so long
in summer did not help either.

I sometimes do feel ambivalent about new features, like they don't bring
enough to the table to justify the churn. One example, Uniform
Initialization increased the number of idioms one has to know, without
simplifying anything, since old-style initialization won't go away. But my
emotions are never strong enough to publicly block such a proposal with a
negative vote, especially in the face of exclusively positive feedback.

I have no ready proposals of how to improve the process, just the vague
feeling that PRs are maybe a bit low-key. And sometimes move too fast.
Especially since the mail flood increased a lot since we switched to skara
tooling.

Note that this is not to question your work in any way; on the contrary, I
really appreciate what you do. But you wondered about the silence, and I
tried to answer that with my perspective.

Thanks & Cheers, Thomas