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What's the story with JavaFX nowadays? I'm not a Java dev, but from a user perspective it's a bit of a PITA since OpenJDK doesn't (?) package JavaFX with it (an

What's the story with JavaFX nowadays? I'm not a Java dev, but from a user perspective it's a bit of a PITA since OpenJDK doesn't (?) package JavaFX with it (and neither does the latest oracle JRE/JDK?). It seems to be open source but the main program I'm thinking of, an old-school raytracer for minecraft Chunky [0] requires it be packaged with the JDK, hence the requirement for Java 8. Is this just laziness on the part of those devs to not package it up or is there something else going on? [0] https://github.com/chunky-dev/chunky https://github.com/chunky-dev/chunky

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
JavaFX is no longer part of the core OpenJDK distribution, but it's not dead and gone, it's just maintained separately. There's no need to stay on Java 8 to use JavaFX, although I'm not qualified to speak on whether it would be a lot of effort to upgrade a JavaFX application to a newer Java.
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
  One issue is that I think Oracle forced package renames and, afaik, there’s no compatibility layer available for packages that expected the old Class Names. To my mind, this sort of defeats the purpose of the JVM’s universally unique symbol names.
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    I don't think so. They were named javafx... both before and after, no? Doesn't sound like a real problem though. Renaming things is the easiest kind of change to accommodate.
    - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
      I think I’m confusing it with the Java EE changes. However, renaming is only easy to accommodate if you have source access. The JVM’s model is portable binaries, so forcing renames breaks some of that model.
      - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
        True, it would break binary compatibility.
    - thu2111 6y ago
      JavaFX 15 API is compatible with that of JavaFX 8.
pvorb 6y ago
Yes, this indeed looks like laziness of the developers to me. When the app was developed, JavaFX came pre-packaged with the JDK/JRE, so they still rely on it. Today, it should perhaps just be a regular dependency of your app and be part of your app. If I were to build a Java desktop application today, I would even bundle the entire JRE, since you cannot assume that it is installed on most desktops anymore.
vbezhenar 6y ago
AFAIK you need to include JavaFX DLLs with your application and configure appropriate java.library.path. It's not laziness, JavaFX is not part of Java anymore, so you need to deploy it like any other native component.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago

JavaFX is no longer part of the core OpenJDK distribution, but it's not dead and gone, it's just maintained separately. There's no need to stay on Java 8 to use JavaFX, although I'm not qualified to speak on whether it would be a lot of effort to upgrade a JavaFX application to a newer Java.

fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
One issue is that I think Oracle forced package renames and, afaik, there’s no compatibility layer available for packages that expected the old Class Names. To my mind, this sort of defeats the purpose of the JVM’s universally unique symbol names.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  I don't think so. They were named javafx... both before and after, no? Doesn't sound like a real problem though. Renaming things is the easiest kind of change to accommodate.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
    I think I’m confusing it with the Java EE changes. However, renaming is only easy to accommodate if you have source access. The JVM’s model is portable binaries, so forcing renames breaks some of that model.
    - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
      True, it would break binary compatibility.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    JavaFX 15 API is compatible with that of JavaFX 8.

pvorb 6y ago

Yes, this indeed looks like laziness of the developers to me. When the app was developed, JavaFX came pre-packaged with the JDK/JRE, so they still rely on it. Today, it should perhaps just be a regular dependency of your app and be part of your app. If I were to build a Java desktop application today, I would even bundle the entire JRE, since you cannot assume that it is installed on most desktops anymore.

vbezhenar 6y ago

AFAIK you need to include JavaFX DLLs with your application and configure appropriate java.library.path. It's not laziness, JavaFX is not part of Java anymore, so you need to deploy it like any other native component.