JDK 11.0.3 Update process

[Andrew Hughes]

On Tue, 19 Feb 2019 at 13:01, Lindenmaier, Goetz
<goetz.lindenmaier at sap.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Andrew,
>
> > It does seem a bit early to me for 11.0.4, especially with the
> > transition from Oracle ownership. I was expecting
> > the branch to happen more around the time we received the security
> > patches, but then I also feel that the lead
> > time under Oracle was too long, leading to patches taking a long time
> > to actually appear in releases. It really
> > depends on what testing one wants to do prior to release.
>
> what we are proposing is to use jdk11u-dev for 11.0.4, and jdk11u for
> 11.0.3 as soon as both are available.
>
> What is the matter with doing this right now?  Not doing it means
> that all changes downported will still end up in 11.0.3.
> Actually, I think 11.0.3 should be in stabilization phase currently,
> and it should go there as soon as possible. Aleksey and Christoph
> are currently building a repository that resembles 11.0.3-oracle
> as good as possible.  We should stabilize this repository starting right
> when they are finished.
>
> At the same time, we should not block others from downporting
> changes needed in 11, but not necessarily in 11.0.3.
> There are already some 30 changes flagged 11.0.4-oracle. We could
> start pushing them to jdk11u-dev if we dedicate the two repos for the
> two different releases. And I think doing that now would be better than
> starting this business only 8 weeks in advance of the release.
> (And if Christoph does not volunteer to do that, I might :))
>
> So, to take up what Volker is proposing, and to put it into my own words,
> I would propose:
>
> Once we have jdk11u-dev:
>  * let's start pushing 11.0.4-oracle changes to jdk11u-dev.
>  * let's continue pushing 11.0.3-oracle changes to jdk11u.
>  * let's push changes requested for downport for jdk11u to jdk11u-dev except:
>  * let's push changes that fix issues in 11.0.3 that adhere to the RDP2 rules
>     to jdk11u. This can be both: downports and fixes crafted for 11.0.3
> and finally:
>   * on every Thursday (or any other weekly point in time), let's merge all changes
>      from jdk11u to jdk11u-dev except if jdk11u has a major issue.
>      (I would volunteer to do this for now) )(based on a change that ran through
>       our nightly testing as long as there are no build tags)
>
> Best regards,
>   Goetz.
>

I didn't say there was anything the matter with it, more that I was
surprised it was happening so quickly. I'm still wrapping up things from
the last CPU.

>From experience, the earlier you split off a release branch, the more
work has to be done in backporting from the current development branch
to the release branch, or, as you suggest, pulling from the release branch
back into the development branch.

On that latter approach, there's an obvious risk there that you push something
to 11.0.3 first which causes issues. I think there are good reasons for only
determining fixes as worthy for the release branch after they've soaked for
some time in the development branch. It's also not clear to me what the
"RDP2 rules" are.

I would like to see regular tags for both 8u & 11u. This would help testing
of our downstream trees, which currently don't get merged until Oracle push
all their internal work after release.
-- 
Andrew :)

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

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