Backporting features [was Re: RFR (11u, XXL): Upstream/backport Shenandoah to JDK11u]

[Andrew John Hughes]

On 17/02/2020 15:45, Claes Redestad wrote:

snip...

> There is also a more insidious difference in that the backport means the
> code for OpenJDK 8u takes a big step away from the state of the fork of
> OpenJDK 8u Oracle maintains for Oracle JDK 8u. This is of course
> something the OpenJDK updates project is free to ignore, but it
> significantly increases risk that critical bug fixes to Oracle's
> proprietary fork will not be applicable to OpenJDK 8u and vice versa,
> which will lead to more work for everyone, and increase risk that
> serious bugs slip through.
> 

This seems to give the impression that this would be something new. It
isn't. Divergence was inevitable as soon as Oracle chose to create a
fork rather than working with the community.

It also seems to suggest that these "critical bug fixes to Oracle's
proprietary fork" are somehow being made available for integration into
OpenJDK 8u. They are not. I don't see how something that is unavailable
can be applicable to OpenJDK 8u in the first place.

As Andrew Dinn has already said well, and in greater detail, the onus
for divergence can not rest solely on the shoulders of the OpenJDK
project. We do our best to maintain parity with what Oracle is
backporting, using the limited information available, but there is only
one of us who has full visibility of both 8u trees, and it is not the
OpenJDK 8u project.
-- 
Andrew :)

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

PGP Key: ed25519/0xCFDA0F9B35964222 (hkp://keys.gnupg.net)
Fingerprint = 5132 579D D154 0ED2 3E04  C5A0 CFDA 0F9B 3596 4222
https://keybase.io/gnu_andrew