[External] : Re: New informational JEP: 14: The Tip & Tail Model of Library Development

[Alex Buckley]

Hi Johan,

Thank you very much for your comments. Getting to a shared understanding 
of T&T in the vast community of library owners will be no small thing. 
There's now a video to accompany JEP 14 -- 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozUE4YN_WhI -- but it's early days.

On 11/7/2024 1:38 AM, Johan Vos wrote:
> The main "question" I have is about the "backport as little as possible" 
> -- which I believe is a principle most library maintainers agree with. 
> In the section "Do not backport new features and performance 
> improvements", there is a paragraph about "exceptions".
> The definition of such an "exception" is a bit vague, probably on 
> purpose since it depends on many criteria (some library-specific).
> However, in absence of a clear definition, I expect lots of discussions 
> about this. Consumers of a library will try to convince maintainers to 
> fix a "simple but critical" bug -- which can be a real simple 3 line 
> patch that is completely isolated and is almost certainly not changing 
> any behavior at all.  The latter is however never guaranteed. 

Inspired by your comments, I added a paragraph about bug fixes to that 
section. The intent is to help library developers prepare for when they 
find themselves in the position of having to choose between "NO" and 
"YES". Vocal consumers can out-maneuver any rules that a library has 
written down -- "I know you never backport P5 bugs, but I really think 
this bug should be a P4. Why not backport it?" -- so the JEP has to 
bless a tendency towards _inaction_ in tail trains.

https://openjdk.org/jeps/14#Do-not-backport-new-features-and-performance-improvements

Alex