OpenJDK vs Sun JDK Versions

[Kelly O'Hair]

Keith Kowalczykowski wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
[snip]
> 4. As far as ensuring that Sun JDK 6 fixes make it into OpenJDK 6, I presume
> you can not do a diff/patch using Sun JDK source bundles because 1)
> licensing issues and 2) enough has changed between the Sun JDK and the funky
> history of OpenJDK 6. Therefore, I'm am guessing that changes are applied to
> both Sun JDK 6 internally and OpenJDK 7, and then backported to OpenJDK 6,
> correct? Are there procedures in place to make sure that things don't fall
> through the cracks?

The reasons that Sun JDK 6 update changes cannot or are not just
applied to OpenJDK6 is numerous, some technical, some legal, some
business. From my perspective, I only change OpenJDK6 when it's
somehow deemed necessary. It would be unrealistic to expect all
the Sun JDK 6 fixes to show up in OpenJDK6, it just ain't gonna happen.
Having said that, if it's a critical fix, it probably will be done,
determining what 'critical' means is another story.

Initially both Sun JDK 6 and Sun JDK 7 were in TeamWare workspaces,
so part of the technical issues are that the Sun JDK 6 sources have
remained in TeamWare, JDK 7 has converted to Mercurial, and OpenJDK6
started out as TeamWare then was converted to Mercurial.
So in the middle of all this was two large conversion projects.

The changeset you refered to was:
     http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk6/jdk6/jdk/rev/014da9cee8f1
this was a changeset created by the scripting I created to convert
OpenJDK6 from TeamWare to Mercurial. So it's a bit of a Frankenstein
creature changeset, fair warning it could be dangerous. :^(

The Sun JDK 7 restructuring to become the "open" OpenJDK7 was extensive
and this did not happen to the Sun JDK 6 sources, that was a big project.
The fact that OpenJDK6 and OpenJDK7 share the similar "open" structure
makes it easier to apply changesets as patches between them, but that
only stays easy as long as the basic structure remains the same.
The point being that applying patches between these creatures is not
trivial, and over time will get more difficult.

Hope that helps explain things a bit, from my perspective anyway.

-kto