[incubation] continuous integration of another Eclipse project...

["Mark Stoodley" <mstoodle@xxxxxxxxxx>]

The OpenJ9 project proposal is in its creation
review at this point (https://projects.eclipse.org/proposals/eclipse-openj9).
This project will be consuming the Eclipse OMR project on a regular (actually,
continuous, is what we would like) basis. These two projects are quite
closely linked (in that Eclipse OMR provides Virtual Machine technology
components, like garbage collection and JIT compilers, that are then "specialized"
by OpenJ9 to implement a Java Virtual Machine).

What we're imagining is that OpenJ9
will maintain its own private "fork" of Eclipse OMR (an openj9.omr
repository alongside the primary openj9 repository we're optimistically
expecting to be created at GitHub) that we want to mirror commits from
the upstream Eclipse OMR project when they happen. We really do think we
want to be at the bleeding edge on both projects at the same time (because
life isn't challenging enough, I guess). One motivating reason for that
is so that OpenJ9 can immediately test and react to the impact of Eclipse
OMR commits in the context of a Java Virtual Machine (i.e. leveraging tests
written in Java).

I'm wondering primarily how this kind
of consumption model should interact with the CQs one normally files when
the "version" of a dependent project is being updated: if OpenJ9
pulls in every Eclipse OMR commit, which could mean up to 40+ commits per
week, I'm *really* *really* hoping that will not require a CQ each. Another
possibly relevant wrinkle is that, despite lots of activity, Eclipse OMR
hasn't done a release yet (yeah, we're proud :( ).

Does any other project do this kind
of thing already?

Any advice or, especially, feedback
on how we can pragmatically use this kind of model and meet our IP tracking
requirements?

Is there anything Eclipse OMR needs
to do to facilitate this consumption model, and is there anything we need
to ensure in the construction of OpenJ9 (or its private fork of OMR) to
make this work and be practical?

--mark