[Sablevm-developer] On the 1.1.1 release and further

[Grzegorz B. P. <ga...@de...>]

Hi all,

I wanted to ask you for opinions and suggestions about how and when
should SableVM 1.1.1 release happend. Below you'll find what I think
about it, given our last experiences with 1.1.0 and current state of the
affairs. I also touch some further issues. Even if you (accidentally)
agree with the below, I'd love to hear it.

SableVM 1.1.1 release objectives:
* Fixes of grave bugs since 1.1.0 (like waitfor())
* Enchancements since 1.1.0
  - new classpath 0.08 (soon to be released)
  - David's fillings in the JNI interface
  - Thread.interrupt() and (if I make it on time) EnsureLocalCapacity()
* Get more attention as our conficence in 1.1.1 is bigger (announces
  on sablevm-announce, freshmeat, etc. - should we call it "1.2 beta?")

SableVM 1.1.1 release path (based on what worked for us before):
1. Importing new Classpath release
2. Merging new Classpath into staging
3. Testing the codebase
4. Making and announcing the release

Last time 1) was done by Etienne, 2) by David, 3) by Chris,  4) by me.
I think that besides some side issues and bad timing caused by things
beyond our influence, it worked pretty well, so it'd be great, if this
time also everyone could put his share in the process.  (I'd be
particularly interested in helping with 2), but only if I have
interrupt() and EnsureLocalCapacity() done by that time)


Another thing is SableJIT release. It's up to David when it happens,
but I think we shouldn't wait too long with releasing this code as a
_development_ release. We can even do it along 1.1.1, why not? I think
that this way David (and we all) could get some bugreports from the
users or/and gain confidence that SableJIT is actually usable in
the real, wild world ;-) And for some people word "JIT" is magical...


Beyond SableVM 1.1.1:
* I think 1.1.1 shouldn't bring us (m)any bad surprises. The less of
these, the sooner we could release 1.2.0. It really is very important
to make a new _stable_ release. Most of people is not keen on using
releases marked "development", even if ours are rock-stable compared
to what other FLOSS projects release with such sticker.
* The next thing seems to be this long-promised and awaited closer
integration with GNU Classpath. It's in the works, I'll send more info
as soon as the idea of implementing it in realistic way stabilizes.


You might have noticed that I am trying to focus mostly on the user-POV,
general usability things. And this is on a purpose. SableVM is just too
good to get a sticker of "Research VM" which is perceived as not meant
for real world usage. We all know that's not true and I am sure that
seriousness of our (not necessarily directly user-visible, but in the
end important for enduser) work in SableVM Project becomes much more
apparent when we clearly show that.

We're doing that already, we just need to keep it going.

				Grzegorz B. Prokopski
-- 
Grzegorz B. Prokopski <ga...@de...>
Debian GNU/Linux      http://www.debian.org
SableVM - LGPLed JVM  http://www.sablevm.org
Why SableVM ?!?       http://devel.sablevm.org/wiki/WhySableVM