Numbering of updates in future 8u quarterly releases

[Gil Tene]

In the thread on "RFD: Draft guidelines for working on jdk8u", Andrew
discusses doing one release per quarter in 8u going forward. I'd like
to discuss the numbering of those expected update  releases, so that
downstream builds will have an opportunity to align on a common
meaning, and the consumers of various downstream builds would be
able to tell what they are looking at…

The relevant paragraph in the RFD e-mail is:

> On Feb 7, 2019, at 10:01 AM, Andrew Haley <aph at redhat.com> wrote:
> ...
> Once a quarter, we will snapshot the jdk8u development tree and
> prepare a Critical Patch Update (CPU) release. Once the snapshot has
> been taken the engineers working on the CPU will work in the dark,
> sharing the patches with only the OpenJDK Vulnerability Group. Any
> patches not committed to jdk8u at the time of the snapshot will
> probably have to wait for a later release. I don't propose to make any
> non-CPU releases: one release a quarter should be quite enough for
> jdk8u. However, if an urgent problem arises we might need to do make
> an intermediate release.
> ...

AFAICT the closest things to the description above in past 8u update
release are "PSU" releases with update numbers 8uXX2. For example
8u172, 8u182, 8u192, 8u202, … Those updates included both the
latest security related patches (all the stuff included in the "CPU"
8uXX1 update releases such as 8u171, 8u181, 8u191, ...) as well as
additional changes (bug fixes, minor features, etc.) accumulated since
the previous 8uXX2 "PSU" release.

Going forward (for everything after the current 8u202), what will these
once-per-quarter updates be called?

I see three main options:

1. Keep going with the existing convention, and use the 8uXX2 for the
quarterly releases described in Andrew RFD e-mail. Continuing from
where the January CPU/PSU versions (8u201 and 8u202) left off. So
this coming April would be 8u212.

2. Do some sort of "skip" to denote the change from two (8uXX1 and
8uXX2) to one (8uXX2) quarterly release cadence. E.g. 8u302 for
this coming April.

3. Go with some other, different-than-past cadence, and different
meaning for the Y in 8uXXY going forward. (I'll use 8u777 as
a placeholder example for this).

My vote would be #1 above, for simplicity and continuity. I.e. 8u212
for April, 8u222 for July, 8u232 for October, etc. etc. etc.

— Gil.