Skip to main content

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index] [List Home]
Re: [jakartaee-platform-dev] [jakarta.ee-spec] Issue for call tomorrow

> This artefact repo should be permanent:
> Reproducibility is important!

If the staged final artifacts are used, this is guaranteed to be false. The only way to resolve it is to change the EFSP/TCK process. I'm not convinced that reproducibility of a CCR is essential. We need to be pragmatic here. The spec process is already a significant burden relative to just running an open source project. If the perceived benefit of additional essential patent grants is not worth the effort, we won't spend the effort.

> When the TCK run is successful, a final spec version can be released with a ballot approves it.
This should be the norm for the ratifying compatible implementation. A ballot for the final release of a spec cannot be started until this is true. How does an RC TCK help here?

> We also want to ensure in a more complex dependency tree, that multiple versions of one spec are not allowed, especially major versions not (that's not fulfilled in 9.1 too)!
Major versions, yes, but minor versions by definition should not be a concern if SemVer is used.

> This results in a new final release need to be done at least at one of the leaf dependent specs to be able to combine them in Jakarta Spec A. When they are in a M or RC state, it can be fixed easier with another RC before all could become final at least.

I don't see how an RC state helps here. With an RC I have to spin up an RC+1 because it is in Maven central sd I cannot delete it. With staged finals, I can respin them by dropping the current staged repo.


On Jan 26, 2022 at 9:24:33 AM, Jan Westerkamp <jan.westerkamp@xxxxxxx> wrote:
I would like to share my thoughts on this topic with a little example:

Project structure:

Jakarta
    Jakarta Spec A
        Spec A Document
        Spec A API
        Spec A TCK
    Jakarta Spec B
        Spec B Document
        Spec B API
        Spec B TCK
    Jakarta Spec C
        Spec C Document
        Spec C API
        Spec C TCK

Implementation Project X
    Implementation X_A
    Implementation X_B

Implementation Project Y
    Implementation Y_A
    Implementation Y_C


Dependency graph:

Jakarta Spec A
    Jakarta Spec B
    Jakarta Spec C


In this example Jakarta Spec A is an umbrella spec (in a general sense, see below) and Jakarta Spec B and Jakarta Spec C could be independent component specs.

I think, we agree that only final artefacts reflect a version, that is intended to be used by common application developers (end users).
And these final versions need to end up in Maven Central (as sync point for end users).

We want to have one single version for a single Jakarta spec (meaning for the spec document, API and TCK of the spec) to show what belongs together.
That version (and only that) is under control of the Jakarta spec project and governance of the Jakarta EE Specification Committee - implementation projects versions are not.
To be clear: If an implementation project decided not to use SemVer and orders versions by approaching Euler, Pi or use a count down, they are free to do so - even when this is not reflecting common user expectations ;-)
However, it is a good idea to ensure SemVer for all of the Jakarta specs (including the platform/profile/umbrella specs on my opinion, but that might be a different discussion).

By the way, the same is true for implementation project structure changes: I.e. renaming implementation X_A to A_X would be out of scope and therefore control of Jakarta.

One requirement for a Jakarta spec to become final is, that at least one implementation passes the required TCK (or in some cases TCKs, exactly spec TCK + global TCK part at the currently for some specs, but let's assume this fact is covered in the spec TCK itself) successfully to ensure that a spec is implementable and therefore useful at all.

In the example above that means one of implementation X_A or implementation Y_A at least has to pass the Jakarta Spec A required TCK successfully.
To achieve that, the artefacts need to be referenceable and loadable by the implementation projects at minimum, but not necessarily from Maven Central.

This artefact repo should be permanent:

Reproducibility is important!
Out of scope and control of Jakarta there might be issues, that are influenced by the environment: Jenkins, Maven, Java SE, Container Runtime, OS, VM, Hardware, physical environment etc.
Even when they are rare, they are usually hard to find - being able to exclude the issue is within Jakarta itself, it is very helpful to be able reproduce it at any time.
That requirement results in the exact implementation artefact need to be available permanently too.

Side note: The cooperation with Adoptium could help regarding Java SE and to some degree OS changes.

Staging is not fulfilling the requirement at the moment, so pushing Ms and RCs to Maven Central as a sync point may be a workaround.
For the future, me might put these artefacts to a Maven repo under governance of EF to achieve that permanently without confusing end users (but that's another discussion too).

As David pointed out, we need to define the TCK process and it's technical implementation not for the happy path only - tests will fail and the root cause may be in ANY artefact involved, that might need to be fixed!
So I am with Emily, even the TCK could not be final at the beginning, when we want to be able to fix it and end up with one single version for the single Jakarta spec version.
When the TCK run is successful, a final spec version can be released with a ballot approves it.

Having final artefacts available somewhere (like in Staging) before the TCK has been passed could cause other problems too: It is quite best practice to cache Maven - on the organisational border and locally at the devs machine - most of them is out of control of Jakarta to withdraw a version and invalidate caches!
So better try not to do that in any case.

We want to have the requirement that final versions of a spec have only final dependencies (that is not fulfilled in Jakarta EE 9.1 Platform, unfortunately - as discussed yesterday in the platform call), but an M or RC release could have M, RC or final version dependencies.

That results in releasing final spec releases from the leaf to root in the dependency tree, where another source of final release dependencies might result from unchanged final spec dependencies of earlier releases.

In the example above this means, Jakarta Spec B and Jakarta Spec C need to become final before Jakarta Spec A can be.

We also want to ensure in a more complex dependency tree, that multiple versions of one spec are not allowed, especially major versions not (that's not fulfilled in 9.1 too)!

Both requirements could be ensured by automatic testing in the future.

TCKs should be able to reference tests from TCKs of dependent specs to ensure compatibility (may be partly) - therefore references need to be stable.

One option to achieve that would be code duplication (antipattern) or executing the dependent tests directly (that in fact what the platform TCK might do in the future, partly now and therefore my vote for a clean project structure with resulting clean namespaces - but again, that will be discussed somewhere else... ;-) ).

One theoretical example, for having to fix a dependent final spec (including one of the involved TCKs) might be if only the combination of multiple dependent specs result in an issue that prevents the technical combination of the two technologies at all at the higher level. I.e. Jakarta Spec A can not combine successful already released Jakarta Spec B and Jakarta Spec C final versions. This results in a new final release need to be done at least at one of the leaf dependent specs to be able to combine them in Jakarta Spec A. When they are in a M or RC state, it can be fixed easier with another RC before all could become final at least.

Note: This all is true for all specs with dependencies, which make them to (or let them behave like) umbrella specs like the profiles (Platform aka Full Profile, Web Profile and Core Profile including profiles and optional Jakarta specs like NoSQL) to some degree (!)

I hope this will be helpful for clarifying the TCK process and implementation.

May be, it's worth to think about a change in the Eclipse Foundation Technology Compatibility Kit License (https://www.eclipse.org/legal/tck.php), if this is necessary with the split up TCKs?

Best,

Jan


Am 26.01.22 um 15:10 schrieb Scott Stark:
Because TCKs and APIs are not the same thing. You cannot make a compatibility claim using APIs. You do not get essential patent rights based on your API version. Both of those things are done under the current TCK process using the final TCK that has the Eclipse Foundation Technology Compatibility Kit License (https://www.eclipse.org/legal/tck.php) which only the final version of the TCK should have bundled. This is the current TCK process and to allow ratifying compatible implementations to use non-final TCKs would require some EFSP change. 

You can release a TCK whenever you want. I don't see what benefit you are deriving from ratifying using a non-final TCK. Both the scope of scope of essential patents and grant of those patents derive from the final specification and final TCK. The benefit of non-final APIs is that it simplifies the circular nature of having to produce a compatible implementation to ratify the final API, spec and TCK. The final TCK becomes the source of truth relative to whether the compatible implementation has appropriate APIs and behavior.

On Jan 26, 2022 at 5:47:28 AM, Emily Jiang via jakartaee-platform-dev <jakartaee-platform-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Why can't TCKs adopt the same process as the APIs? As long as we prove the RC is the same as the final staging artifact, we are all good. This is what I suggested:
Raise a RC for both APIs and TCKs - let compatible implementation to ratify the artifacts with CCRs
Stage final APIs and TCKs - ballot open with the above CCRs to vote the staged artifacts.

I think the current process of staging TCK final is ok because TCKs and specs are in separate repos. Once they all end up under one repo, the api and tcks will be released together. When you do a RC for API, you will have a RC for TCK. I don't get why using the same release of TCK RC is not acceptable.
Thanks
Emily


On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 1:42 AM Scott Stark <starksm64@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The TCK cannot be an RC as it is part of the specification commit project PR that is being balloted on for final ratification. At that point there needs to be a staged final API artifact, specifications, java doc, and TCK. The compatibility request is verified against the final candidate TCK referenced in the PR. If the ratification ballot passes, the staged TCK is promoted to the final TCK without modification. All that process does is add the signing signatures of the specification committee.




On Jan 25, 2022 at 4:54:41 PM, Emily Jiang via jakarta.ee-spec <jakarta.ee-spec@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
+1 on clarifying this.
For rectifying a spec, the viable solution is to use release candidates for both APIs and TCKs to avoid chicken egg situations.

It has been a requirement that the TCK used for certification was the proposed final TCK, but not the APIs.
Based on what I said above, TCKs used for ratifying a spec can be a RC as well. This will certainly help with the specs that contain both APIs and TCKs.
Thanks
Emily

On Tue, Jan 25, 2022 at 8:57 PM David Blevins <dblevins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Agree.  If the signature tests pass, all is fine and the vendor is allowed to use their own API jars.  In some cases those API jars are implementations: Faces, Activation, Mail, etc.  There are other situations like JACC where the API jar can't really be considered an implementation, but there is definitely significant code there.

We'd likely want to document those requirements in the JESP as the EFSP is what currently holds the open source requirement.

We may need to add some clarification on the API jars produced by specification projects as people are increasingly referring to them as "the official" jars, implying 1) all other jars are not official or lesser and 2) they must be used by the compatible implementation used for ratification.  Neither is the case.  We need some explicit text that says we have no concept of "the official" jars and any jars that pass the TCK and signature tests are equivalent.

For Jakarta EE 8 our compatible implementation was a pre-Eclipse version of GlassFish that did not ship the jars produced by the Specification Projects.  We did do some work to ensure the Specification Project-produced jars could pass a TCK run.  If we have thoughts that this should or does not need to happen again if a compatible implementation does not use the Specification Project-produced jars, we should write that down too.


--
David Blevins
http://twitter.com/dblevins
http://www.tomitribe.com

> On Jan 25, 2022, at 9:28 AM, Scott Stark <starksm64@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> An issue that came up during the platform call was what are the requirements for the compatible implementation that is used to ratify a specification. A specification team had decided that they could not produce an RC that could be used for such a ratification based on their interpretation of the following two document statements:
>
>       • According to https://www.eclipse.org/projects/handbook/#specifications-implementations “Compatible Implementations may only claim compatibility with a final specification. ... No claims regarding compatibility may be made for an implementation milestone build or unratified specification version."
>       • https://github.com/jakartaee/specifications/blob/master/.github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE/pull_request_template.md, which states, "For a Release Review, a summary that a Compatible Implementation is complete, passes the TCK, and that the TCK includes sufficient coverage of the specification."
>
> If I look really pedantically at these two statements, maybe I could read that only final APIs can be used by a compatible implementation, but this is also ignoring other discussions we have had about the special nature of the compatible implementation used to ratify a specification.
>
> We need to make a clear statement about the requirements for the initial compatible implement(s) used to ratify a specification as well as any additional constraints on post ratification compatible implementation claims.
>
> It has been common practice in EE and MP to use ratifying compatible implementations that do depend on release candidate APIs. It has been a requirement that the TCK used for certification was the proposed final TCK, but not the APIs. By virtue of passing the TCK signature tests, whatever API versions the compatible implementation used, they have been validated as compatible as determined by the final TCK. This should be a sufficient validation of the compatible implementation.
>
> Let's discuss tomorrow.
>
> _______________________________________________
> jakarta.ee-spec mailing list
> jakarta.ee-spec@xxxxxxxxxxx
> To unsubscribe from this list, visit https://www.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/jakarta.ee-spec

_______________________________________________
jakarta.ee-spec mailing list
jakarta.ee-spec@xxxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe from this list, visit https://www.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/jakarta.ee-spec


--
Thanks
Emily

_______________________________________________
jakarta.ee-spec mailing list
jakarta.ee-spec@xxxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe from this list, visit https://www.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/jakarta.ee-spec


--
Thanks
Emily

_______________________________________________
jakartaee-platform-dev mailing list
jakartaee-platform-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe from this list, visit https://www.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/jakartaee-platform-dev

_______________________________________________
jakartaee-platform-dev mailing list
jakartaee-platform-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe from this list, visit https://www.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/jakartaee-platform-dev


_______________________________________________
jakarta.ee-spec mailing list
jakarta.ee-spec@xxxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe from this list, visit https://www.eclipse.org/mailman/listinfo/jakarta.ee-spec

Back to the top