JDK7: Buffering and stabilization

[Jonathan Gibbons]

JDK folk,

Recent announcements [1] have changed the rules for integrating changes 
into OpenJDK JDK7.

Introducing a plan for generating stable milestone builds is a Good 
Thing, but as anyone knows who likes to throw rocks in a river,  water 
has a tendency to find its own way.

In this case, the water takes the form of suggestions inside and outside 
Sun to workaround the impediment of restricted access to the integration 
workspaces as each milestone appears.  These workarounds are taking the 
form of setting up and/or using alternate integration areas for use 
while the primary integration areas are locked down.

It would seem, by their nature, that there will be fewer stabilization 
fixes for each milestone than there will be features for the following 
milestone.

Therefore, rather than have individual groups set up their own private 
integration areas, I'd like to suggest we create a single new forest for 
pushing changes to stabilize the master repository for a upcoming 
milestone -- and we leave the main integration repositories open for 
business, accumulating changes until they can next be pushed to the master.

Thus the proposal would be:
    -- milestone putback approvals still required (no change)
    -- when a milestone approaches, the integration areas remain 
generally open for business, but temporarily hold off pushing changes to 
the master
    -- when a milestone approaches, access to the master is only via the 
new "stabilization" forest which is just used for those changes that are 
necessary to stabilize the upcoming milestone

Such a scheme would save developers from having to workaround the 
"on-again off-again" access to the integration areas, that we have now.  
The cost is just one more forest to be built and tested (compared to the 
many that otherwise might now be expected to spring up.)

-- Jon


[1] http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/jdk7-dev/2009-April/000526.html