Proposed schedule change for JDK 9

[Stephen Colebourne]

As per my earlier email [1] it will come as no surprise that I welcome
the chance to get modules right, even if that means a delay.
Stephen

[1] http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/jigsaw-dev/2015-December/005454.html



On 1 December 2015 at 17:08,  <mark.reinhold at oracle.com> wrote:
> The key feature of Java 9 is Project Jigsaw [1], which will introduce a
> standard module system and use that system to modularize both the Java
> SE Platform and the JDK.  This large project consists of a JSR for the
> module system plus five JEPs, for the implementation of the module
> system and for other changes specific to the JDK.
>
> We've made good progress on Jigsaw over the last eighteen months: We
> reorganized the source code into modules in August 2014 (JEP 201 [2]),
> restructured run-time images to support modules in December 2014 (JEP
> 220 [3]), began discussions in the JSR 376 EG last February [4], and
> published a design overview, draft specification, and EA builds in
> September [5].  More recently we presented an integrated series of
> talks on Jigsaw at JavaOne 2015 and Devoxx BE 2015 [6] which were very
> well-attended and motivated many developers to download the EA builds,
> try them out, and send feedback and suggestions.
>
> In the current JDK 9 schedule [7] the Feature Complete milestone is
> set for 10 December, less than two weeks from today, but Jigsaw needs
> more time.  The JSR 376 EG has not yet published an Early Draft Review
> specification, the volume of interest and the high quality of the
> feedback received over the last two months suggests that there will
> be much more to come, and we want to ensure that the maintainers of
> the essential build tools and IDEs have adequate time to design and
> implement good support for modular development.
>
> For these reasons I hereby propose a six-month extension of the JDK 9
> schedule, moving the Feature Complete (FC) milestone to 25 May 2016, the
> General Availability (GA) milestone to 23 March 2017, and adjusting the
> interim milestones accordingly.
>
> As with previous schedule changes, the intent here is not to open the
> gates to a flood of new features unrelated to Jigsaw, nor to permit the
> scope of existing features to grow without bound.  It would be best to
> use the additional time to stabilize, polish, and fine-tune the features
> that we already have rather than add a bunch of new ones.  The later FC
> milestone does apply to all features, however, so reasonable proposals to
> target additional JEPs to JDK 9 will be considered so long as they do not
> add undue risk to the overall release.
>
> Comments on this proposal from JDK 9 Committers are welcome, as are
> reasoned objections.  If no such objections are raised by 18:00 UTC next
> Tuesday, 8 December, or if they're raised and satisfactorily answered,
> then per the JEP 2.0 process proposal [8] this will be adopted as the
> new schedule for JDK 9.
>
> - Mark
>
>
> [1] http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jigsaw/
> [2] http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/201
> [3] http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/220
> [4] http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jigsaw/spec/
> [5] http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/jigsaw-dev/2015-September/004480.html
> [6] http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jigsaw/talks
> [7] http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk9/
> [8] http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~mr/jep/jep-2.0-02.html