[security-dev 00106]: Introductory JSN Gate information

[Brad Wetmore]

(This is old hat to those developers who integrate into the JSN (Java 
Security and Networking) gate, but for those who aren't familiar with 
the gate, here's the quick intro.  Those who know the process need not 
read further.)

Hello again from your JSN gatekeeper,

Executive Summary:
==================
JSN is a "child" repository of TL, which is a "child" of the MASTER.

Details:
========
You probably noticed a number of change sets went into the JSN gate, but 
you may be wondering where those change sets came from since they 
weren't from the MASTER.

A couple of years ago, the JSN gate was a direct child of the MASTER 
gate, with our own separate integration slot in the morning.  Our sister 
gate, TL (Tools and Libraries), had the following slot in the afternoon. 
  TL generally started their pull/build/test cycle as soon as I finished 
my push.

Unfortunately, we occasionally had incompatible changes between the JSN 
and TL gates.  If we were lucky, there would be obvious compilation 
errors, but the ones that compiled and then failed basic sanity testing 
were incredibly frustrating to discover.  It puts the whole integration 
at risk, to say nothing of the collective blood pressure of the 
gatekeepers and developers involved.

After a couple of these in a row, the TL gatekeeper and I decided to 
have the JSN gate become a "child" of the TL gate so that our changes 
can be tested together long before it goes to the MASTER.  That is, 
instead of syncing directly to the MASTER, JSN now syncs to the TL gate. 
  That way I can do my own sanity testing of the merged JSN/TL gates 
before anything ever hits TL.

It's worked quite well, so we are continuing this process for the 
foreseeable future.

So, the JSN gate is currently up to date with TL gate.  At some point in 
the near future, I'll be pushing the JSN changes to the TL gate.  I 
usually do this before the TL integration slot, so our latest JSN 
changesets will appear in the MASTER during the TL slot.

As a last point of info, if you're curious about the gatekeeping process 
overall, please see:

     http://blogs.sun.com/wetmore/entry/you_re_a_gatekeeper_uh

The JSN/TL arrangement isn't mentioned there.

Hope this helps.

Brad