[foreign] panama repo futures

[Maurizio Cimadamore]

Hi,
I just wanted to send a quick email outlining where the Panama 
repository is going to go next; first, we'd like to create a new branch 
(foreign-jextract) which will contain the work described in [1]. This 
branch will be a "child" of the foreign-abi branch. We'll then likely 
iterate on the minimal jextract implementation for some time, to make 
sure that all the examples in [2] work under the new approach.

Once everything is stable, we'd like to publish an EA build containing 
memory access API, ABI support and the jextract work - in other words 
something which contains all the pieces that are needed for native 
interop. At which point we can gradually phase out the current 'foreign' 
branch and the EA build that goes with it.

As some of the branches get ready for integration, we will file JEPs and 
upstream them accordingly; as you might have noticed, the memory access 
API already has a JEP [3] and a CSR [4] and the plan is to upstream as 
an "incubating" module [5]. Next one up is foreign-abi, for which we 
will soon start a separate JEP and upstream process; and after that, 
another one for the revised minimal jextract/API.

Panama is undergoing a lot of change - but it is also nice to see some 
of the stuff we've been working on slowly making their way into 
mainline. I'd like to thank everybody on this list for all the feedback 
we received so far - please keep it coming!

Cheers
Maurizio

[1] - http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~mcimadamore/panama/jextract_distilled.html
[2] - 
https://hg.openjdk.java.net/panama/dev/raw-file/841483f2887f/doc/panama_foreign.html
[3] - https://openjdk.java.net/jeps/370
[4] - https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8234050
[5] - https://openjdk.java.net/jeps/11