Confused about status of JFX+JRE cobundling

[Richard Bair]

> While there are benefits there are also drawbacks:
> 
> * JavaFX release schedule has to be tightly aligned with JDK which
>  means JavaFX has not much freedom anymore

Yes and no. JavaFX is already part of the Java support offerings from Oracle, and the sustaining team has to therefore support JavaFX in addition to Java itself, and aligning releases and cobundling makes this much, much easier (ie: there probably wouldn't be an enterprise support offering for FX if we didn't align it with SE, and for FX this is pretty important). There is also the fact that there is an SE release every 3 months or so, so we have plenty of opportunities to get new features out there. Unlike the JDK, our code doesn't yet require JSR or JCP approvals. That is why we were aiming for making JavaFX a part of standard Java in Java 9 timeframe so that by the time we got there FX would be mature enough to be able to handle 18month release cycles between new features (for anything that is part of JavaSE, you can only add new API on major releases, whereas since FX is not yet part of the Java specification, we can make updates any time).

We also get to share the same SQE (quality/test) cycles, documentation cycles, etc. Since we hope to be part of JavaSE at some point in the next couple of years, it makes sense to cobundle and reap the logistical benefits. The downsides to cobundling are the same as they would be when we are part of SE itself -- compatibility vs. security tradeoffs (which we hope to address partly by application bundles as discussed on the other thread), etc.

Richard