[7u communication] Changes to JDK 7u10 plans

[Henri Gomez]

> No. I don't speculate about the content of future non-OpenJDK releases, regardless
> whether they are from Oracle, IcedTea, etc. Despite my good looks, I can't predict
> the future, so I don't even bother trying.
>
> Typically downstream Projects based off 7u end up using the source code in 7u as the
> basis and, if they are in the mood for it, adding changes of their own to it.
>
> A good example is IcedTea, which in a typical release (see http://markmail.org/message/st2d3zjccucgz6tb)
> will include additional fixes that take it "beyond" a particular 7u forest it was
> based off. It's impossible for me to predict which fixes, if any, those would be
> ahead of time, since the decisions about their inclusion into IcedTea are not made
> here, they are made  downstream, in the IcedTea Project. And that's fine, too. It
> also is true for any downstream.
>
> Which brings us back to your initial question - what the IcedTea release corresponding
> to 7u11 could be based on. One option is a future IcedTea release corresponding to 7u9.
> Another option is 7u-dev, as you mentioned yourself. Another option is to cherry-pick
> fixes from jdk7u-dev that you care about. And so on - I'm sure you can come up with more.
> I don't know which option is best for IcedTea. I would, though, if in doubt, go for
> whichever seems to be the lowest risk one in the context of IcedTea.
>
>> Also, why aren't there trees for e.g. u3, u5, etc. (the security CPUs)?
>
> I'll quote from this Project's Q&A web page:
>
> "As with OpenJDK 6, security fixes are first kept confidential and applied to a private
> forest before being pushed to the public forest as part of the general synchronized
> publication of the fix to affected JDK release trains."
>
>> This gives the impression that 7u is not meant for direct use, but only as a basis
>> for something else like IcedTea, if we're going to have releases with no applicable
>> tree, or even tag, and security fixes are applied to a mid-stream feature release.
>
> That depends on the point of view. We don't publish binaries, so from one point of view,
> there is nothing you can use directly - you need to build your own binaries, or find a
> downstream that does that for you, like Oracle JDK. From another point of view, the
> releases created by this Project are well usable on its own, once you've ran make (and I'm
> a happy user). From yet another point of view, that's not something you'd want to run as
> a a non-technical user, because it lacks additional features like plugin, web start, etc.
>
> So, in practice, it depends on one's perspective. I would expect most users of 7u to run
> a binary published downstream, though.
>
>> I'd really like to see a situation where, for all releases, there is a specific point
>> on a specific tree that can be used to download the source for that release, as in most
>> other FOSS projects.
>
> We already provide that for releases developed in this Project. See http://jdk7.java.net/source.html
> for the links for 7u6, which was the last release developed in this Project.

Interesting thread about where and when releasing and included
contents, OpenJDK sources and customs add-ons.

That's why I'll continue to release stock OpenJDK 7, 8, Lambda, Jigsaw
in openjdk-osx-build and OBuildFactory projects (to be merged).

Continuous releases of OpenJDKs, provided as native packages to ease
installation and update.

Cheers