OpenJDK 8u and Backport Bugs

[Severin Gehwolf]

Hi Andrew,

On Fri, 2020-12-11 at 04:41 +0000, Andrew Hughes wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> We've worked out a way we can create backport bugs for OpenJDK 8u
> issues and have them correctly resolved by hgupdater.
> 
> For 8u, '8-pool' doesn't work as '11-pool' does with OpenJDK 11u. I
> assume this is because '8-pool' is assumed to refer to the Oracle fork
> of 8u, which also use 8u281, 8u291, etc. Sadly, a generic 'openjdk8u'
> seems not to work either.
> 
> What does work is using the specific version of 'openjdk8ux'. We
> therefore propose the following, and I have updated the wiki to
> correspond with this:
> 
> 1. When work is started on a backport, create a backport bug as follows:
>   a. Log in to the OpenJDK bug database and go to the bug you want to backport.
>   b. Click More → Create Backport
>   c. Set yourself as the Assignee and change Fix Version to 'openjdk8u'.
>   d. On the new bug, clear the inherited 'Affected Versions' and labels.
>   e. Set 'Affected Versions' to 'openjdk8u'
>   f. Add any desired labels, such as 'jdk8u-<username>', to the bug,
>   where <username> is your OpenJDK username.
> 
> 2. Proceed as usual, but apply the jdk8u-needs-review label and make
> approval requests on the backport bug.  This avoids the issue where
> labels on the parent issue are cloned to other bugs.

While point 2) would avoid the need to remove a couple of additional
labels when the backport bug is being created, it doesn't really avoid
the need of "clearing labels" entirely. There are very few bugs without
labels at all.

Also, the master bug serves as the place were all the info is being
gathered. This is usefull, since the JDK 11 backporting info would be
on the same bug as any JDK 8 backporting info. Doing certain labels on
an explicit backport bug breaks this. Adding the label on the backport
bug also suggests to add the "Fix Request" comment to the backport bug,
moving further info away from the main bug. With my maintainer hat on,
it's easier to do approvals by looking at the master bug directly and
see how decisions panned out for other releases.

For those reasons I think we should keep this part as-is: Keep applying
the jdk8u-fix-request label to the master bug. Clearing 2-ish labels
when creating the backport bug should be fine. I'd be happy to do that
if people forget.

Besides, the intention would be to create the backport bug as soon as
somebody starts working on it. At that point, no jdk8u-fix-request
label should be there anyway and, thus, would only apply if JDK 11u
adopted this process too. Maybe I'm missing something.

Thanks,
Severin