IcedTea-Web 1.7 released!

[Jiri Vanek]

IcedTea-Web 1.7 released!

As usually, release was delayed by localizations, but every time I had chance to release (without 
them) something come in. So the guilt of nearly half an year delay is mine (and JDK9's :) . My 
apologies.
Anyway - during the delay, some "extra useful" stuff was added, which would never appear otherwise - 
united graphic and javaws (+ javaws applet viewer (-html))) windows port.
Originally I was planning (from my side) 1.7 as last feature-full release, however with windows 
world and JDK9 many new challenges appeared and a lot of work must be done to have those two really 
fully working.

JDK8 is still JDK to use ITW with. JDK9 works, but use with caution, it is still under development, 
and transit project like ITW to new modular system correctly is ... will be big challenge.


So whats new? From most interesting over most important to most visible:

  * headless support and reworked dialogues engine - This is major think. The hart of ITW dialogs 
was reworked.
     * most of the dialogues have now (working!) remember/remember per doc|code-base option with 
some good afterwards manipulation options in itw-settings  (inducing desktop integration)
     * greatest on it is, that ITW is again fully headless capable.
       * all dialogues can be fully viewed and controlled from command line
       * if the target application is headless, ITW can happily live without X (works also on 
windows). If application isn't headless, itw will start it, but it will probably crash.
       * some more info at: https://jvanek.fedorapeople.org/devconf2017/remoteCmdlineTools/
  * http 511 support - this protocol is older then my grand grand grand parents, and so it is 
useful. But, it is being still used. Its implementation was finally added
     * with http 511 support come "cool" itw mode --browser. It launches perfect html 3 compatible 
browser :)

  * jnlp protocol - support for jnlp:// and jnlps:// was added. No meter how the ITW code changes 
were simple, it is not easy to integrate.
   * gnome-based Linuxes may find inspiration in fedora spec file: 
http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/rpms/icedtea-web.git/commit/icedtea-web.spec?id=b7bb0e5bee270399d76b05424e6b8843def6c946
   * windows have it from msi
   * all others must integrate on its own
  * cache - again big touching. I recommend to clear all cache before update or manually adapt your 
offline apps. Now port is included in path (except defautl ones) and nested jars are unpacked into 
subdirectories. Also https is preffered over http.

  * javascript and javafx made more close to usefulness
  * experimental support for windows - yes open source javaws for windows is here and is working. 
Currently there are only .bat launchers and exist many known bugs, but should be really good enough 
for more thendeveloper preview. And a lot of will be done here in future. Stay tuned!
  * GUI and usage of PolicyEditor made much more user friendly
  * JDK9. Indeed! Its here! Itw have nearly full capabilities with new modular jdk. You can see the 
story here: 
https://jvanek.fedorapeople.org/devconf2017/portingjavaInternalToJdk9/portingOfItwToJdk9-II.pdf
   * you can build javaws with jdk9
   * when you build javaws+plugin (even native) with jdk8 and it will work fine with jdk9
   * although ITW runs fine, the application it is running may not. But really, it is no longer 
ITW's fail.
  * windows - javaws and plugin.jar cna be built (and run) in cygwin. Built like this, they provide 
redistribute-able windows binaries and installer.
   * windows launchers are now bat files with its pros and (mostly) cons (se future work below)
   * you can not register .jnlp files to them (but commandlien work just find, isn't it?
   * jnlp protocol works great even with bats
  * new graphics (logo, icons...) - it is most visible change, isn't it?-)


And what is in the future?
  * For 1.8 I plan to hunt down the bugs of 1.7, tune windows, and tune JDK9.
  * The main change will be disappearing of linux shell launchers and windows bat things, and 
replacing them with native ones with shared sources
   * the language of choice for this native launchers is rust
  * Unless there will be community scream, no more will be done


Downloads as usually:

  * windows installer and redistribute-able zip archive (with binaries)
   * http://icedtea.wildebeest.org/download/icedtea-web-binaries/1.7/windows/
  * ITW documentation
   * http://icedtea.wildebeest.org/download/icedtea-web-docs/1.7/
  * and holy source:
   * http://icedtea.wildebeest.org/download/source/icedtea-web-1.7.tar.gz

sha256sum:
2030ea323964ae82eabe5436eef076de4b892786424ad9be21f3abc9d76c0291  icedtea-web-1.7.tar.gz
6c2df5a76f5f059e0a8df4d09ff0883853d1d7bc12ec14fb46002d9cc4997c04  icedtea-web-1.7.win.bin.zip
5ba98ddc1ec6d0777468cde1f66f66691e526ff5629c90ad508289844155656c  itw-installer.msi


all with signatures verifiable by fingerprint:
    C058 EF1E 7498 12E6 A486  384B 53B5 CFF6 71EE ED59


Enjoy!
   J.

-- 
Jiri Vanek
Senior QE engineer, OpenJDK QE lead, Mgr.
Red Hat Czech
jvanek at redhat.com    M: +420775390109