HotSpot Changes in 7u

[David Holmes]

Hi Andrew,

cc'ing hotspot-dev

On 20/12/2012 3:11 AM, Andrew Hughes wrote:
> Hi,
>
> What is the process for getting into HotSpot changes into 7u?
> Can individual changesets be suggested and committed or do we have
> to wait for a bulk update?  And who decides what goes in these bulk
> updates?

Disclaimer: This is my observation not a reflection of any written 
policies etc.

Most (all?) Hotspot changes come in via the hsX forest (currently hs24 
for 7u12). Most backports come about from things "we" know we need in 7; 
some come from individual engineers sponsoring the jdk8 change and then 
the backport (I've done a few of those).

Individual changesets can be suggested, but only hsx committers can 
commit them, so you likely need a sponsor (as was likely needed for the 
8/hs25 changeset anyway). The decision process is similar for 7u in 
general - we need to look at the nature of the problem and the fix and 
whether it is suitable for an update release (ie we won't backport 
perm-gen removal just because someone asks :) ). Backport complexity can 
also be an issue because of the significant changes between 7u and 
present 8 hotspot sources.

> We'd like to see the following changesets in 7u:
>
> 7170638: Use DTRACE_PROBE[N] in JNI Set and SetStatic Field.
> http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk8/jdk8/hotspot/rev/75982791ddb6

This seems reasonable to me. Though I will note that a few developers on 
the JDK disliked the appearance of the ""**NOTICE** Dtrace support 
disabled: ..." message in their build output.

> 8000622: Forgot to hg add and check in test for JDK-7170638
> http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk8/jdk8/hotspot/rev/26351ce8c4b0

Again seems reasonable to me.

> 8000780: make Zero build and run with JDK8
> http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk8/jdk8/hotspot/rev/a3e2f723f2a5

And again.

I'd suggest approaching the original engineers who sponsored these 
fixes. But please bear in mind that we are hitting an extremely busy 
period with JDK 8.

David
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> Thanks,