Proposed dates for JDK 8

[Mathias Axelsson]

Hi,

First of all I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Mathias Axelsson and
I'm the lead release manager for the Oracle JDK. I'm based in Stockholm, 
Sweden. 

Although my role at Oracle is to ensure that we deliver Oracle JDK 8 I think 
it's clear that our developers are primarily focused on delivering code into 
OpenJDK, and so I'd like to propose the following high-level dates for the 
JDK 8 Release Project for review and feedback.

In 2010 Mark posted details about plan B for JDK 7 and JDK 8 [1]. The below 
dates have been adjusted from the original post based on the details I have 
for JDK 8 at this stage to come up with an achievable plan.

First of all I'd like to propose some dates for the implementation milestones 
for JDK 8 so that there are some high-level buckets that can be targeted for 
delivering features and enhancements.

Implementation milestones:
- M1: August 2011 - April 24, 2012
- M2: Ends June 14, 2012
- M3: Ends July 30, 2012
- M4: Ends September 11, 2012
- M5: Ends November 26, 2012
- M6: Ends January 30, 2013

Based on the above I would recommend a feature complete (FC) date of
end of  January 2013 when all features and new tests development would 
need to be completed.

Since there are a lot of features going into JDK 8 I think we need at least 
as much time to stabilize JDK 8 as was needed in JDK 7. That leads us to a 
target release date in September 2013.

In order to get from FC to the release date based on the above dates I think 
we'll need to raise the bar in steps during the bug fixing phase of the 
release so that we stay focused on the critical issues. I would like to 
recommend the following approach.

- General bug fixing from early February till early April 2013
- In early April 2013 the bar is raised to only allow P1-P3 bugs to be fixed
- By mid-June 2013 the bar is raised even higher and only showstopper bug 
  fixes are considered

The component JSRs will most likely need time to bake beyond the FC date, 
so I think JSR work should be exempt from the above rules until early 
May 2013. After that time they'll follow the same approach as above.

In order to reduce the likelihood of critical bugs being discovered very 
late in the game, as had happened in the final days of JDK 7 stabilization 
with bugs that were discovered [2] by Apache Lucene developers, I would 
like to recommend that we set a date for when testing and bug reporting 
should have been completed in order to have enough time to fix them before 
shipping JDK 8. Based on the proposed dates I would recommend that we set 
that date to early April 2013. Bugs reported after this date should be 
looked at (and hopefully fixed) as well but if the reports comes in too late 
it might not be possible to fix them within the JDK 8 time frame. Therefore 
I propose a proactive approach to test early and report the issues so we can 
prioritize the critical bugs as early as possible.

I would like the timeline for JDK 8 to be clear for everyone working on the 
project so please respond with any feedback by April 17 so it can be taken 
into account.

Kind regards,
Mathias Axelsson

[1] http://mreinhold.org/blog/plan-b
[2] https://blogs.oracle.com/java/entry/java_7_questions_answers