On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 1:53 AM, Dr Andrew John Hughes <gnu_andrew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> For those who didn't see Pekka's blog on planet.classpath.org you can >> find it here: >> http://penberg.posterous.com/whats-the-future-of-gnu-classpath >> >> He makes some very good points. I agree with all of them. > > I agree on the general overtone. Indeed, I already blogged about it: > > http://blog.fuseyism.com/index.php/2010/11/03/the-homogenisation-of-the-java-platform/ > > There are several inaccuracies in the points themselves. I'm not too > surprised, given that Pekka is still new to the project, but I am surprised > that you'd agree wholeheartedly with such little hesitation. I hope my inaccuracies didn't get into the way of the overall point. On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 1:53 AM, Dr Andrew John Hughes <gnu_andrew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Mauve has not been abandoned (as you acknowledge below). You merely > need to look at the logs to see that tests have been added e.g. > > http://sources.redhat.com/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/mauve/gnu/testlet/java/security/Policy/setPolicy.java?cvsroot=mauve > > I posted to the Mauve mailing list about this last week. It is in the same > state as GNU Classpath, in that there are very few contributors, but it has > not been abandoned. Sorry about that. It looked abandoned last time I checked it out but I guess I wasn't looking hard enough. On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 1:53 AM, Dr Andrew John Hughes <gnu_andrew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > 1.6 work has already been done on GNU Classpath, though that is now > some time back; it's all there in the mailing list archives though. Last time I tested Jato with GNU Classpath, there were some obvious missing 1.6 APIs in java.lang.Math, for example. I need to check if that's changed now. The overall feel I get from GNU Classpath is that it's quite firmly stuck at 1.5 level, though. On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 1:53 AM, Dr Andrew John Hughes <gnu_andrew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > There is no 1.7 API to implement yet, so that's a pointless statement. > I also tend to still believe in the general Classpath spirit that we > implement primarily to match the requirements of applications, not > specific applications. We have no hope of ever TCKing the thing > anyway, and to my knowledge it's never been used with a JDK that's not > Oracle-based so I have no trust in its reliability. There's APIs that are likely to make it into 1.7 (e.g. NIO2). I don't see much to be gained from not implementing them now. You might have a different view on what should be implemented and what not but that doesn't make my statement pointless. >> Now the cool thing would be if I said "lets do them all right now!". >> But instead I am going on vacation and be offline for about two weeks. >> Sorry about that. But I didn't want to not respond at all. >> >> As soon as I am back I would like us to at least start moving to >> mercurial on savannah if people don't mind. > > Yes, I do mind. > > We already discussed this some time back: > > http://developer.classpath.org/pipermail/classpath/2008-June/002629.html > > and nothing happened. I don't particularly see any huge benefit to > moving the repository to a different version control system. It would > make more sense if there were lots of contributors but there aren't. > As is, if you're going to put some time in, I'd rather it was spent > reviewing patches than messing about with the VCS. Hey, it's not as if I'm making this up! This is a genuine experience from someone who wanted to contribute a simple thing to GNU Classpath. While *you* don't see the benefit from transitioning to Mercurial or git, I certainly do, and I claim other people who are used to modern tooling see that as well. On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 1:53 AM, Dr Andrew John Hughes <gnu_andrew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > One of Pekka's motivations is also flawed: > > 'how much problems it causes for developers that don't have commit > rights to the centralized repository!' > > Moving it all to Mercurial just so it's easier for someone else to > create a forked lower-quality copy that accepts unreviewed patches is > not a good motivation IMHO. I hope you don't mean this: https://github.com/penberg/classpath because it's (a) not a fork (it's queue of patches I want to feed to mainline) and (b) I don't merge unreviewed patches (I reviewed them myself). > The discussion earlier today: > > http://developer.classpath.org/pipermail/classpath-patches/2010-December/006528.html > > shows exactly why we do need patch review and discussion. Again, I have nothing against patch review and discussion. My other point of patches needing more swift attention has nothing to do with my point about modern tooling. >> The discussion on the patches mailinglist does show a real problem >> though. We have very little active hackers, and so aren't doing very >> well helping new hackers like Pekka and Ivan to get their work >> integrated. > > I agree this is a problem. But whining about it won't help. Getting > involved would. I'm doing my best but I can't do everything. There > are only so many hours in the day. I'd prefer to spend more of those > hours on GNU Classpath rather than the intense boredom of > IcedTea/OpenJDK work, but unfortunately that's not how the cards are > stacked. Well, sometimes you need a little bit of whining in order to change things. ;-) P.S. I hope my blog post didn't come across as negative towards GNU Classpath maintainers. I much appreciate the work you're doing and just wanted to share my thoughts on what _I_ think needs to change for people like me to be able to contribute to it. Pekka
