Proposal to revise forest graph and integration practices for JDK 9

[David Holmes]

On 27/11/2013 3:13 AM, Joe Darcy wrote:
> On 11/25/2013 7:19 AM, Chris Hegarty wrote:
>> I am really happy to see this issue being discussed. I'm in favor of
>> fewer, simpler structured, forests, and this proposal seems to give that.
>>
>> There is one potential issue I see. Having done several bulk
>> integrations into jdk8/tl over the past year, I found it nearly
>> impossible to get a stable/quite jdk8/tl. Ignoring the stability issue
>> for now ( being discussed in another thread ), if hotspot is to
>> integrate into -dev it will be nearly impossible to for the integrator
>> to actually build and test, the latest source, before pushing. As the
>> underlying repos in -dev are bound to be moving at a fast pace.
>>
>> It is worth noting that currently this is not an issue as master is
>> quite, apart from the scheduled/well known integration slots.
>>
>> Apart from the bulk integrations I did into jdk8/tl, I'm not sure that
>> anyone else downstream is doing anything similar. If so, then their
>> experiences here would be useful.
>>
>> This said, I'm still in favor of the current proposal, just maybe
>> needs more specifics around integrations.
>
> Just a quick comment for now, for this reasons and others, I think it
> would be helpful if we moved the JDK to a more continuous integration
> model. The sort of challenges we have in JDK integration are exactly the
> sort of situations CI can help.

I often hear CI being touted as some kind of silver bullet but I am yet 
to see how it actually helps. I would be interested to get some details 
both on what "CI" means exactly and what problems it resolves (and what 
problems it introduces).

David

> -Joe
>