Board report July - September 2007
Summary ------- Throughout the reporting period Harmony has had active development across all aspects of the project. There are no issues requiring the Board's attention. Development ----------- The project produced another successful Milestone build at the end of June 2007. The entire development team collaborated in producing a stable, well-tested, snapshot build that we called Apache Harmony 5.0 M2. Since then there has been the steady and continuous work of bug fixing and enhancements across all aspects of the codebase. Of particular note is the effort from a variety of contributors on: * bytecode verifier : integrating and testing the new Java bytecode verifier code contribution * creating download bundles : tested combinations of Harmony 5.0 M2 with Eclipse 3.3 & Tomcat 6.0.13 * code coverage : enhancing tests to increase code coverage * build-test infrastructure : testing snapshots with more applications and scenarios * performance : new JIT and GC algorithms for improved code generation * debian packaging : produced some deb packages of Harmony builds * vm thread redesign : rationalisation of the VM threading model * vm class unloading : new class unloading feature in the VM * pack200 : picked-up implementation of complex JSR200 spec * AWT&Swing : focused attention on stability and robustness * bootvm : additional work on alternate VM implementation * java 6 class library : patchy, but steady progression towards Java 6 APIs The dev list have been discussing the current practice of producing milestone builds every two months in addition to our nightly snapshots. Some would prefer a milestone every three months to enable more sophisticated work completion, and this topic is still under discussion. We continue to look to the Board for a successful resolution to the JCK license impasse. Security -------- There was a concern raised about the security of our File.createTempFile code, and after a short discussion on the dev list our implementation was changed to the satisfaction of all involved. There were no other reported security issues. Community --------- The community continues to operate in a very healthy manner. Several developers have published material about Apache Harmony (linked from the project website), or spoken about the project at developer conferences. We are collaborating with other projects, both at the ASF and beyond, including evaluating opportunities to reuse their code in Harmony. There have been no new committers or PMC members this period. Upon receiving Geir's resignation the PMC voted to recommend Tim Ellison as the new Chair, and Tim was subsequently appointed as such by the Board in July. There are currently 27 committers, ~22 of whom were active this period.