Alexei Fedotov wrote: > Under resource constraints we may even think of dropping Java 5 in favor of > Java 6. This would save Java 6 supporters their merge efforts and nullify > merge bugs.
Maybe. I hadn't thought of going that far - at least, not without a reasonable overlap period that allows people to migrate from 5.0 to 6.0 stream. Given we don't make a big deal of publishing the 6.0 stream code today, I think it would be unreasonable to abandon the 5.0 stream abruptly. We may well get to that point over time. > Why have not we done that before? AFAIK, one wanted to pass TCK for Java 5, > and that was an important step to ship Harmony release, which in turn was > important to officially participate in benchmarks. I don't think this plan > would fail due to 5% more failures we got due to Java version > incompatibilities. There are stronger risks, e.g. TCK absence. I agree, and that is why I'm proposing a different approach for the 6.0 stream. Rather than shoot for 100% completeness to the Java SE 6.0 API and request that TCK, I suggest we select a number of Harmony modules and publish a useful 'select' runtime. With our architecture it is then trivial to expand out with the additional modules to reach the full SE in time. Regards, Tim > On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 6:12 PM, Tim Ellison <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Sian January wrote: >>> I agree that we need to be more timely about the next milestone. >>> >>> It would also be good to focus a bit more on Java 6 since Java 5 is >>> starting to become old. Maybe we could do a Java 6 M1 (or subset as >>> you describe) to coincide with Java 5 M10? >> I'm not too bothered about the 'age' of Java 5. IMHO there are not too >> may apps that have a hard dependency on Java 6 APIs yet; but we have got >> some technology in that branch that, at the moment, does not see the >> light of day and that is a shame. >> >>> On another note, I would also like to see us get up to 100% pass rate >>> for the class library tests and then keep this going - i.e. if a >>> commit causes any tests to fail then it should be fixed asap or backed >>> out. I think this would have helped us avoid some of the issues that >>> caused such a long stabilisation period for M9. >> Agreed. Having build/test systems visible in the ASF infrastructure >> would help. There has been some discussion about getting separable >> tests, but even if that does not come about we could extend Hudson to do >> a full build/test cycle too. >> >> I expect that we will have problems getting platform coverage from the >> ASF Hudson systems though. AFAIK they are all Linux x86_64 machines. >> >> Regards, >> Tim >> >>> 2009/4/17 Tim Ellison <[email protected]>: >>>> Immediately after a release is usually the time that I'm thinking about >>>> lessons learned, the project road map, and future deliveries from >> Harmony. >>>> Most noticeable for me was the long stabilization period we undertook >>>> for M9 compared to earlier releases. This was required, I believe, >>>> because of the longer open development period [1]. The lesson to take >>>> away from that is to ensure we keep an eye on our regular release >>>> schedule and keep the time boxes short enough that stable fixes get out >>>> to our users, and we minimize the frozen codebase period. >>>> >>>> Looking ahead I'd therefore expect 5.0 M10 to be released at the end of >>>> May (6 weeks after April 8th = May 20). >>>> >>>> >>>> The other thing that bothers me is the lack of expose we give our Java 6 >>>> branch. While the majority of fixes we commit are applied to both >>>> branches, we have some good work completed in the Java 6 API branch's >>>> core classes that is not getting the uptake it deserves. >>>> >>>> The non-core Java 6 classes get very little attention at the moment. >>>> With Harmony's strong modular architecture we can easily construct a >>>> headless runtime that delivers those core classes without the missing >>>> functionality. >>>> >>>> I'd like to suggest that we experiment with the flexible components in >>>> Harmony to deliver a headless runtime based on the Java 6 APIs. >>>> >>>> Thoughts? >>>> >>>> [1] Depending on exactly how you count it, we were open from 17 Nov - 27 >>>> Feb, which is a massive 14.5 weeks! >>>> >>>> Regards, >>>> Tim >>>> >>> >>> > > >
