Project proposal: s390x port

[dalibor topic]

Hi David,

Thank you for your quick replies.

On 06.05.2016 15:24, David Edelsohn wrote:
> On Fri, May 6, 2016 at 7:25 AM, dalibor topic <dalibor.topic at oracle.com> wrote:
> Yes, I am the same person.

Thank you for the confirmation.

> IBM itself will not contribute the port.  I will not contribute this
> port myself -- neither as an IBM employee nor on my own behalf.

OK.

>>
>> Could you elaborate a bit on the nature of the development work:
>>
>>  * Who would be in the initial set of the Project's Committers?
>
> The port will be developed by Marcin Kościelnicki.

OK. I don't see Marcin listed at 
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/community/oca-486395.html  - would he 
be contributing to the Port on his own behalf? On behalf of a company or 
other organization? Do you know if he has sent in an OCA for processing?

>>  * Would you have Reviewers on the Project?
>
> Yes, there will be IBMers who will assist with reviews of the proposed patches.

OK. The Project Lead has the authority to designate specific code 
repositories within their Project as requiring formal change review - in 
that case a Project also has the Reviewer Role, of which the Project 
Lead is one by default.

While the Project Lead can appoint the initial set of Reviewers, further 
Reviewers will need to go through a vote, as described in 
http://openjdk.java.net/projects/#project-reviewer - keep in mind that

"As a rough guide, a Committer should author and push at least 32 
significant changesets to the Project before being nominated to be a 
Reviewer."

>>  * Would you be starting from scratch within the new OpenJDK Project, or are
>> you looking at bringing an already existing, internal port in?
>
> This is a new port starting from scratch.

Cool.

>>  * Which JDK release would you plan to target initially?
>
> I believe that the goal is inclusion in OpenJDK 9. I welcome your
> advice and guidance about this issue.

I think getting a new Port starting from scratch into JDK 9 before GA 
could be challenging, considering that the JDK 9 FC date is just a few 
weeks away. You can find the proposed JDK 9 schedule at 
http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk9/ .

My recommendation these days is that porting Projects should start their
work on a released version of the platform, rather then on an in 
development
version. Generally, the amount of churn and accidental breakage should be
lower for a porting Project following JDK 8 Updates, then for one following
JDK 9.

Once you're up and happily running with JDK 8 Updates and regularly sync 
with
the mainline without issues, you can start thinking about tracking JDK 9 
in a
separate forest. I'd also recommend syncing with the mainline on a 
weekly or
bi-weekly basis.

Once the Port on JDK 8 Updates gets to a point where you're happy with 
it, and it passes the TCK for Java SE 8, and you're happy with the 
direction in which your development in the JDK 9 forest is going, then 
it's time to start thinking about submitting a JEP for inclusion into 
the next release.

In general, ports tend to follow the same route as other changes - they 
go into the next release in development first, and once they are there, 
they may (or may not, of course) be backported into an update release.

A good example of following that pattern has been provided by the 
PowerPC/AIX Port Project. You can read about the steps they took on 
their wiki: 
https://wiki.openjdk.java.net/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=13041681 .

The AArch64 Port Project took a similar route.

cheers,
dalibor topic

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