OpenJDK 8u and Backport Bugs

[Andrew Hughes]

On 11:33 Fri 11 Dec     , Severin Gehwolf wrote:
> 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
> 

Yeah, #2 is after the backport bug has been created. What I'm referring to
with "labels on the parent issue are cloned to other bugs" is a backport bug
being created for another release. For example, I've seen bugs for Oracle
backports appear in our queue because they get jdk8u-fix-request added by
the cloning process. Even though they also have jdk8u-fix-yes, they don't
match the filter because of the fix version not being an OpenJDK 8u one.

The same would happen if the 13u backport was done after 8u too.
Ideally, 8u should be the last, but that doesn't always happen. 7u may
want to adopt this process too and that would be an issue there.

I'm aware that it's a bit of a pain when it comes to approving the
bug, but that's something that really only affects the three of us
acting as maintainers and can be worked around easily by opening the
parent bug. I think it's simpler and less confusing for someone
working on the bug to have one bug to work with, not having to flick
between two. Also, having their own 8u backport bug will hopefully
encourage them to make it their own and not worry about adding to a
bug shared by many others.

I don't know how much of an issue bug noise is for people who aren't
interested in the 8u backport process, but this would reduce it.

So, I'd like some feedback from others before making a decision here.
It doesn't seem a good idea to base the decision just on what works
best for us as maintainers.

Thanks,
-- 
Andrew :)

Senior Free Java Software Engineer
OpenJDK Package Owner
Red Hat, Inc. (http://www.redhat.com)

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