On 03/14/2013 02:44 PM, Andrew Hughes wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- >> On 03/13/2013 07:47 PM, Andrew Hughes wrote: >>> ----- Original Message ----- >>>> Oracle ended public updates of JDK6 at the end of last month. >>>> Many >>>> people seem to have concluded that the OpenJDK6 project will >>>> therefore >>>> end at the same time. This is incorrect: OpenJDK6 will continue, >>>> but >>>> will be maintained by the community outside Oracle. >>> >>> 1. Oracle had three main roles in relation to OpenJDK 6; acting as >>> gatekeeper over which patches were accepted into the repository, >>> providing security updates and making releases. The third of these >>> doesn't seem to be addressed above. Will new releases of OpenJDK 6 >>> be made? IcedTea for OpenJDK 6 uses release tarballs as a base so, >>> unless there are further releases, none of the changes made >>> upstream >>> in OpenJDK 6 will be consumed by IcedTea downstream. I believe we >>> are already overdue a new release as there is no release of OpenJDK >>> 6 containing the last three sets of security updates. >> >> Indeed, we need to make a new release of OpenJDK 6 with the security >> patches. There may be infrastructure issues here as we don't AFAIK >> have access to Oracle servers on which to place release tarballs. Or >> do we? > > Not as far as I know, but I don't see how it matters where they are located, > as long as people are notified of the location. > > I'm more concerned that they happen promptly and tarballs are produced with > the same form and contents. Hopefully, there is some obscure Makefile target > that creates them but I'm not aware of it offhand.
OK. >>> 2. What many people actually see as OpenJDK 6 at present, in the >>> form of their GNU/Linux distribution package, is actually IcedTea >>> for OpenJDK 6. Unlike 7, where the changes in IcedTea are just to >>> make it "distro-ready" (using system libraries, etc.), there are >>> now so many backports and other fixes local to IcedTea 6 that it >>> is effectively a different beast altogether. Will OpenJDK 6 be >>> open to accepting some of these fixes, many of which were added to >>> the proprietary version of JDK 6 maintained by Oracle a long time >>> ago, so the two can eventually be in sync? >> >> That would, in my view, be a huge waste of effort. It also risks >> breaking things for no net gain. > > The gain would be to shift the focus from IcedTea6 to OpenJDK6. > Pretty much no-one uses OpenJDK6 directly, as far as I'm aware. All > the distro packages I've seen use IcedTea6 to build it with these > patches applied. When I last tried OpenJDK6, I had to push four > changesets upstream just to get it to build on a modern system. > > If things were broken with these patches, we'd surely know about it > because everyone using OpenJDK 6 packages is using them with these > patches. > > I agree it's a lot of wasted effort for no technical gain. It would > be simpler and easier to just stick with IcedTea. But that does > make OpenJDK 6 a bit pointless, to be frank. I think we'll have to agree to differ on that question. Andrew.
