Now that the 0.9.0 release is complete, it’s time to think about the schedule for future releases. With OpenJDK’s new 6 month release cycle, new Java versions are released every 6 months. With JDK11’s September release fast approaching and followed closely after by the October JDK8 quarterly update, there’s a lot of work to do!
What does this OpenJDK release landscape look like?
1) New versions of Java are released every 6 months: March and Sept.
2) Regular updates to existing releases happen quarterly: Jan, April, July & Oct.
What does OpenJ9 need to do?
OpenJ9 needs to at a minimum align with the quarterly updates to ensure critical fixes (including security patches) are available in OpenJDK with OpenJ9 builds as soon as possible after the changes appear in OpenJDK. This would commit the project to at least 4 releases a year.
OpenJ9 should also aim to match the delivery of feature releases and not wait for them appear in the quarterly update cycle. This allows roughly a month for projects that are following the feature releases to migrate before the next quarterly update. This would commit the project to 2 additional releases a year.
This would commit the project to 6 releases a year:
* 4 of them are quarterly updates and would include all supported JDK levels
* 2 of them (March & Sept) would be special releases that introduce a single new JDK level
We would work with the Adopt community to ensure that it is clear to users which OpenJ9 releases should be built for each JDK level (ie: quarterly vs special releases).
Following this proposal, the next OpenJ9 release would be 0.10.0 in Sept and would only target JDK11.
The next OpenJ9 release would be 0.11.0 in Oct and would include the quarterly updates for JDK 8, 10, & 11.
Comments?
--Dan
