Refactoring JavaFX Builds & Sources

[Scott Palmer]

On 2012-10-19, at 11:00 AM, Anthony Petrov <anthony.petrov at oracle.com> wrote:

> On 10/19/2012 6:37 PM, Danno Ferrin wrote:
>> What would be nice is if the snapshot builds posted the intermediaries to a
>> public facing repository so that installing the naitve build chain ins not
>> a requirement.  IIRC you need a non-free-as-in-beer VisualC++ compiler to
>> spit out windows builds.  (I may be wrong as my knowledge is dated).
> 
> JDK can be built using a free VS 2010 Express edition. I think FX can be built with this free compiler as well.
> 
> --
> best regards,
> Anthony

+1 to using VS express edition.  Other projects attempt to use things like MinGW or some windows-ish variation of GCC.  They are all horrible on Windows.

+1 to Gradle as well.  Maven works okay for simple things, but anything requiring complexity leads you to pull your hair out.  Maven is by-design nearly unconfigurable and awkward to tweak.  Gradle is much easier to deal with when you need to configure a custom build experience.  From a command-line perspective it is the clear winner.  Hopefully IDE support will catch up.

Our current JavaFX-based product us using Gradle to drive builds that are composed of Ant, Maven, Make, and Visual Studio projects along with invoking some custom build tools.  We have a combination of Java Swing, JavaFX, and native bits on Windows, Mac and Linux.  Managing it all can be "interesting" at times.

Scott