OpenJDK 6 and 6u10 features

[Joseph D. Darcy]

Mark Wielaard wrote:
> Hi Joe,
>
> On Fri, 2008-10-31 at 15:48 -0700, Joseph D. Darcy wrote:
>   
>> OpenJDK 6 build 12 contained ports of bug fixes from a number of 6u10 
>> component areas (corba, jaxp, jaxws, langtools). [1]
>>     
>
> Are these component areas now completely in sync?
>   

All the fixes from those areas missing from OpenJDK 6 have been 
incorporated.  In OpenJDK 6, corba has an additional build fix to avoid 
the need for a scheme interpreter (thanks Andrew!) and langtools has a 
few dozen additional fixes inherited by when it branched off of JDK 7.  
At a code semantics level, the jaxp and jaxws workspaces in 6u10 and 
OpenJDK 6 are virtually identical (but the licenses differ).

>> Most changes from 
>> the core jdk component area of 6u10 were not ported.  The porting effort 
>> that took place of a relatively small number of bugs to a subset of the 
>> full OpenJDK code base was still a sizeable effort. [2]  The full set of 
>> changes made to the core jdk in 6u10 is many times larger with a 
>> proportionally larger porting cost.
>>     
>
> Is there a list of these changes/bugs that are in 6u10, but not in
> openjdk6 yet?
>   

Not externally, no (it is a long list).

> What about hotspot? I saw they will start using Mercurial directly. That
> should help with syncing that workspace also.
>   

Yes, I'm discussing with the HotSpot team options for managing that code 
with OpenJDK 6.

>>   We at Sun do not plan to do a 
>> wholesale port of those 6u10 features from the core jdk to OpenJDK 6.  
>> However, over the coming months we will be porting those 6u10 features 
>> to OpenJDK 7 and we would welcome community assistance in backporting 
>> appropriate features from OpenJDK 7 to OpenJDK 6.
>>     
>
> I think people will be happy to (at least it sounds fun to me). If you
> provide a list of changesets that went into 7 and are candidates for 6
> we can setup a schedule for backporting.
>   

Yes, I'll work with the client team to see how we can get a 
notification/signaling mechanism for when such changes go back.

>> (These jdk area 
>> features in 6u10 are separate from plugin and webstart functionality.)
>>     
>
> What is the future of the plugin/webstart functionality? In IcedTea we
> do have free replacements.
>
> Ideally in the end we should see the people doing the closedjdk6 update
> releases base their updates on openjdk6 workspaces instead of using a
> fork. That would consolidate more work on a shared repository. What
> steps would be necessary for the various workspaces to be shared
> commonly between closed/openjdk6?
>
> If that is too much work, or unfeasible because there are still too many
> proprietary blobs in closedjdk6, would it be an idea to have a jdk7
> spurt to get to a common shared code base sooner? Is there a timeline
> for 7 yet?
>   

I think it is unlikely there will ever be full sharing between the 
OpenJDK 6 and 6 update code bases; although at least some of the areas 
can and will be shared.  There should be more concrete timeline for JDK 
7 in the near future.

-Joe