Re: [rvm-core] Code freeze

> 2009/2/3 Steve Blackburn <Steve.Blackburn@...>:
>> I think it would be sensible to have a temporary freeze on the trunk,
>> avoiding all non-essential commits.
>
> I think this is unnecessary, making changes relating to the thread
> model currently would be a bad idea though.
>
>> 1.  There are at least two critical, apparently unrelated performance
>> bugs outstanding:
>>
>>        http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/RVM-758
>>        http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/RVM-762
>>
>> Performance is also significantly (but less dramatically) down on
>> jbb2000, luindex, jess, db and javac.  Most of the dips appeared
>> around 15301 or so, though it is odd since cattrack says that there
>> were two perf regressions against 15301, one of which was fine, and
>> the other of which was slow (things have remained slow since 15301).
>> As a precaution, Daniel has rebooted habanero (the relevant test
>> machine).   Anyway, this is disturbing and I'd really like to see it
>> figured out before we move forward.
>
> I'm working on it. We have a situation where we are generating less
> and tighter code, but performance has regressed. I profiled JBB'05 and
> there are no real clues as to where the performance has gone. The
> performance of jack is harder to monitor as it completes in a matter
> of seconds. On the plus side performance is up for jython, lusearch
> and to a lesser extent chart and javac.

> We are getting noise on the AIX PPC tests where we appear to be
> failing because another process has stolen a CPU.
>
>> 2. Meanwhile Daniel and Fil are trying to get native threads ready for
>> prime time and are now very close, so minimizing churn on the head
>> will help a great deal.
>
> I'm really worried again by the work on PNT (that I really want to see
> in the head). Reading the JIRA traffic I see that we have a new method
> called lockDangerously, when would someone want to lockDangerously
> rather than just lock? I think the PNT code is quite a way from being
> production ready. In doing some donkey work for the PPC implementation
> the documentation wasn't sufficient for me to avoid bugs. Some methods
> are lacking documentation and a lot of what should be self documenting
> isn't. Recent commits on the PNT branch have backed out assertion
> checks and had the infamous commit message of "stuff". This is really
> not good enough.
>
> I think a code freeze waiting for PNT is going to lead to a protracted
> code freeze. I'm avoiding work on Windows and Harmony because it will
> conflict with the PNT work. I don't think we should shut down
> development of the rest of the code base as well.
>
>> I would also like to flip production to GenImmix, but to monitor
>> performance etc, it will help if things are stable, though this does
>> not require a code freeze, and I'll wait till the performance issues
>> are ironed out before I do that.
>
> This may be a good use of the quarantine branch.
>
> Regards,
> Ian
>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> --Steve
>>
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