Proposal to revise forest graph and integration practices for JDK 9

[mark.reinhold at oracle.com]

2013/12/9 8:01 -0800, lana.steuck at oracle.com:
> On 12/05/2013 10:23 AM, mark.reinhold at oracle.com wrote:
>> Lana -- Can you handle doing these manual tests once a week?
> 
> Once we open up jdk9, I'll be doing integrations for multiple Jdk releases:
> - jdk7 update and sometimes there are two updates still being worked on 
> at the same time, e.g. finishing 7u40 and starting 7u60,
> - jdk8 update (again could be two updates at the same time),
> - and jdk9.
> 
> For all of my integrations I run these manual tests which is very 
> tedious and time consuming job. It looks like we will need SQE help with 
> doing the PITs. If they can perform the tests, then we could certainly 
> do weekly integrations.

Ultimately we want to do integrations even more frequently, so rather
than count on SQE or other help we need to figure out how to automate
these tests, or replace them with automated tests.

> One more point:
> Whenever a project becomes really active, things get rough. E.g. in the 
> middle of Jdk8 development, we saw numerous build outages and various 
> issues with incorrect fixes, etc. This is when people start appreciating 
> isolated team forests. I understand the benefits of combining TL and 
> Hotspot (we have seen many issues b/c of their code separation), however 
> in my experience as the integrator, TL and Client do benefit from being 
> isolated from each other. In the last year or so,  there was just one 
> case when a developer ask for a fix from Client to be brought over to TL 
> earlier than scheduled, so they don't seem to suffer from being 
> separate. However, there were multiple issues, when Awt or 2d or TL had 
> their issues (broken builds or tests) and could work it out without 
> affecting others and without any additional stress.

In general there seems to be more technical debt in the client areas
than in core.  We need to address that, and the sooner the better.  In
the meantime, however, let's create a separate JDK 9 client forest so
that weekly dev -> master integrations aren't put at risk in case of
instabilities in client code.

- Mark