Proposed schedule change for JDK 9

[mark.reinhold at oracle.com]

2015/12/1 3:20 -0800, jeremymanson at google.com:
> What constitutes a reasonable JEP in this time frame?  Is it basically
> defined as one that doesn't add undue risk to the overall release?

Yes.  It's better to reserve room for informed judgement on individual
JEPs than try to come up with a uniform set of rules for all JEPs.

> I have no particular concerns about the timeline for Jigsaw features, but I
> do have concerns about the velocity of OpenJDK development.  If larger JEPs
> are not going to be able to target Java 9, and the releases are being put
> on hold for 6 months, will this timeline shift have an effect on when the
> Mercurial repos are made available for JDK10?

(You mean "JDK 10", with a space after the "K".)

>                                                Will larger JEPs be able to
> target Java 10 earlier?

I expect that the JDK 10 forests will open six months later than they
otherwise would have.

> We have a couple of JEPs that we've been meaning to write, but we felt like
> we missed the Java 9 deadline, so the answer to this will inform our 2016
> plans.

I think that what Volker said is apt here.  Large projects with broad
impact such as Lambda and Jigsaw generally wind up driving a particular
release.  Most JEPs, however, are not that large, and the best strategy
is to move them through the process as soon as they're ready so that
they can be proposed to target the next appropriate release.

> Also, will this affect the flexibility in backporting new features to
> JDK8?

That will be up to those working on the JDK 8 Updates Project.

- Mark