F22 System Wide Change: Legacy implementations of the Java platform in Fedora

[Mario Torre]

On Tue, 2015-02-24 at 15:37 +0100, Mikolaj Izdebski wrote:
> On 02/24/2015 02:15 PM, Jiri Vanek wrote:
> > On 02/24/2015 12:43 PM, Mikolaj Izdebski wrote:
> >> I am against official guidelines or policy for legacy JDK packages. I
> >> don't think that any such policy is needed and it would only encourage
> >> adoption of old packages for which there might be no security updates.
> > 
> > Well thats the point - people are calling for them. And wont to maintain
> > them with this risk.
> 
> I thought that the point of this change proposal was "enabling community
> to maintain legacy JDKs", not encouraging people to package them without
> good reason or without involvement to truly maintaining them. Packaging
> older JDKs is *already* possible, so IMHO this change accomplishes
> nothing but showing people how they can dump old, unmaintained software
> into Fedora.

Well, in this case it would not be un-maintained, the Fedora package
would *not* be maintained *by us* (the Red Hat Java Team) indeed, but we
are still actively contributing to the upstream software in its various
versions. While you as a packager cannot specifically count on that,
there's still a level of confidence that the base software won't be
abandoned any time soon. And even when we will stop supporting those
older versions, the community will take over if there is a need for
that, exactly like we have done ourselves before.

Indeed, there's an overhead for the downstream maintainers, we may need
to drop specific version of OpenJDK, or skip a release, or do other
funny things and the Fedora maintainers will have to adapt, but this is
no different than usual I believe. Realistically, we are so conservative
with older JDKs that I doubt this will ever really be an issue.

> >> Currently anyone is allowed to maintain legacy JDKs in Fedora according
> >> to general rules, so this change proposal does not "enable" maintenance
> >> of legacy JDKs.
> > 
> > It is not true. We were killing old packages withut handling the
> > owenership or maintainerships to others.
> 
> Why this is not true? What prevents me from reviving java-1.6.0-openjdk
> or java-1.7.0-openjdk in Fedora and making it available in rawhide? If I
> wanted could just follow standard process and bring it back any time.

You may be able to do that, but you should be careful to not break
existing functionality or you're attract the wrath of your own users!

Changes should be carefully pondered, so defining a process for such
thing to go smooth is not a bad thing.

> >>> === Proposed rules ===
> >>> 0. '''Main JDK maintainers are not never ever responsible for any
> >>> legacy jdk.
> >>> This must remain clear'''
> >>
> >> Package maintainers are responsible for their packages. If maintainer of
> >> "main JDK" is also maintaining "legacy JDK" then (s)he should be
> >> responsible for both of them. I don't see why any special rule should be
> >> defined.
> > 
> > As I higlighted - we - main jdk team - are never ever going to do so.
> 
> Imagine that someone become comaintainer of "main JDK". This rule would
> prevent him from maintaining (and "being responsible") for older JDK.
> This limits people's freedom and that's why I am against that.

I really fail to see in what way this is limiting people freedom to do
anything, a process is just a way to organise work, is a mean, not the
end goal in itself, and to what I'm able to judge the proposed process
makes mostly sense.

> >>> 6. as it is generally not new package, the review process
> >>> '''should''' be only
> >>> formal - to know maintainer and to create cvs repo
> >>>   1. this is quite important, otherwise the new maintainer can become
> >>> really
> >>> frustrated, and we are forcing the "dead" package over"orpahned" so
> >>> the full
> >>> review (especially in alignment with rule 5) really should not be
> >>> forced.
> >>>   2. on the contrary, rules agreed here '''must''' be checked.  (even
> >>> the
> >>> number 5)
> >>
> >> Currently all compat packages must complete full review before being
> >> introduced. Why JDK should be treated specially? I think that with
> >> complex system of virtual provides, alternatives and strict directory
> >> layout it's necessary to fully review "legacy JDK" package to make sure
> >> it doesn't conflict with primary JDK and that it is integrated with
> >> Fedora as expected.
> > 
> > Well the jdk - as is now - will never pass regular review - it is
> > handling config files and libraries and shared jars really differently -
> > and have good purposes for it.
> 
> Package that doesn't pass review shouldn't be part of Fedora.

Well, if your goal is to reduce the user base of Fedora, I'm sure we can
talk about removing the JDK :)

Cheers,
Mario