Recently Oracle announced their intention to stop shipping JavaFX with JDK 11 and later. The result of this has caused some uncertainty in the client Java community, so we at Gluon wanted to very briefly outline the implications of this announcement, for us, and more importantly, for you.
It goes without saying that Gluon has invested heavily in JavaFX. Our belief that this technology enables amazing desktop and mobile user experiences is still unwaveringly strong. With JavaFX, the Java platform has a great UI framework that shares the design and quality of the core Java API’s, and that allows developers to create very performant user interfaces as it leverages hardware accelerated rendering.
With Gluon, we have been contributing to JavaFX for a long time. One of the major achievements is that we ported the JavaFX platform to embedded and mobile devices (iOS/Android). On top of this, we also contribute to a number of JavaFX related projects, including Scene Builder, ControlsFX, Gluon Maps etc.
The new release cadence for Java, where a new release will be delivered every 6 months, is changing the landscape. The fast release cycles for the core Java platform are required in order to keep up with new paradigms, but it also allows different components to be able to make progress at their own pace.
One reason a faster release cadence is possible is that, since Java 9, the Java core classes have been split into a number of modules. It would make little sense to combine all these modules in a single “SDK”, hence this is an opportunity to rethink the way modules are distributed. Perhaps soon we may see modules on a distribution system like jcenter or maven central. At this point we will have the benefit of a fast Java release cadence with improvements to the core offering (language improvements, VM improvements, and core API improvements), and also the ability to make more rapid releases of JavaFX separately.
In order to be able to create JavaFX modules with their own roadmap, the development of OpenJFX has been made more open. At Gluon, we have been very active in this process. We created a github mirror of the OpenJFX source code that is automatically synchronized with the OpenJFX repository at Oracle. Developers can now enjoy the benefits of github that they are already familiar with, e.g. they can fork the repository, play with it, and eventually create a pull request and enhance JavaFX.
Thanks to this move, not only Gluon, but also other companies and individuals can now become closely involved in the development and roadmap of JavaFX.
As we’ve said before, we know JavaFX is very popular. In order to support the JavaFX community, and the companies that rely on JavaFX, Gluon is increasing its JavaFX consulting efforts. We can help with introductions into JavaFX and deep dives on specific topics. We can create components and controls for your company, or we can help fix issues with features, performance, or bugs. Feel free to contact us to find out how we can best help.