[jboss-dev] JBoss AS 4.2.3.GA

[Dimitris Andreadis]

Now that AS5 CR1 is out, I think we can afford to spend some cycles in the background to 
produce AS 4.2.3.GA. There are 100+ bug fixes committed to Branch_4_2 since AS 4.2.2.GA went 
out 8 months ago, so I think it is important to get those out to the community.

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The first thing is to complete any component updates. If there is an update that you want to 
see included, and you can justify the reason (i.e. is fully compatible and solves some 
important bug), now is the time to do so:

http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBAS-4874

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Second step is to review the AS 4.2.3.GA JIRA and make sure any important tasks (i.e. bugs) 
that still need to be fixed are marked as Critical/Blockers. Some unscheduled tasks could 
also be rescheduled for 4.2.3.GA. Before doing that you must be prepared to spend time on 
those, or find someone that can. Our primary goal is to get out those bugs already solved, 
not spend more time on new fixes.

http://jira.jboss.com/jira/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?reset=true&mode=hide&sorter/order=DESC&sorter/field=priority&resolution=-1&pid=10030&fixfor=12311686

I will push forward or unschedule tasks marked as Major or less.

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The third step is to make 4.2.x build & run with jdk6. This is needed to get JBossAS 
distributed with Fedora, that now bundles OpenJDK 6, so we need to make sure JBossAS 
compiles and runs under sun jdk6/openjdk6:

http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBAS-4501
http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBAS-5712

This incorporates 2 new testsuite runs:
JBoss-AS-4.2.x-TestSuite-openjdk16-openjdk16
JBoss-AS-4.2.x-TestSuite-sun15-sun16

Independent of Fedora, there is the question of how we ship JBoss for jdk6. If we compile 
with jdk5 and run with jdk6 then JDBC 4.0 support will not be compiled into the JCA classes. 
I see 3 options:

a) we say we don't support JDBC 4.0, we ship only jdk5 compiled binaries, that can run under 
jdk5/jdk6.

b) We make a dual jdk6 build for jboss-common-jdbc-wrapper.jar (and possibly other libs), 
include those in docs/examples/jdk6 together with a script that is able to replace those 
libraries as a post installation step, for those that want JDBC 4.0 support.

c) we create a separate jbossas-jdk6-x.y.z.GA distro

We are facing the same issue with AS5, so your input is very much appreciated.

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The final (fourth) step is to make sure all testsuites/tck are in order:

http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBAS-5722
- compatibility matrix
- sun15
- jrockit15
- sun15sun16
- openjdk16openjdk16
- tck14
- ejb3
- ws

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We could try to release sometime after July 14th, but I don't want to put down a hard date 
before we evaluate the current status of the testsuites.

Again for those working on AS5 CR2, AS 4.2.3.GA is not our #1 priority. We have put it on 
the backburner for some time now, so let's get over with it without much fuss.

Any issues/concerns let me know.

Thank you
/Dimitris