JavaFX port to iOS/Android status

[Tom Schindl]

Hi,

I think Richard mixup a bit in his list VMs and AOT compilers. XMLVM is 
a AOT compiler producing an iOS/Android executable from Java-Class files 
(in the end it produces ObjectiveC code which emulates the Stack of the 
JVM so the code is not really human readable).

There are 2 stragegies to run FX on iOS (fairly the same is true for 
Android):
* get a VM running on the device (this VM is not allowed to JIT)
* AOT compile your Java app so that it runs without a JVM


I currently only know of Avian to run as a JVM on iOS/Android whereas 
there are at least 2 AOT compilers:
* XMLVM
* RoboVM (main target is iOS as of now)

I'm writing up my thoughts on this in a blog post but in short I like 
RoboVMs approach which is built on top of LLVM and Clang who themselves 
are outstanding OSS projects. The biggest problem of RoboVM when it 
comes to FX is that it use the Android (Harmony) class path library and 
IIRC FX is useing com.sun.misc stuff e.g. for properties.

Tom

On 21.04.13 09:08, John C. Turnbull wrote:
> Hi Richard,
>
> I knew nothing about XMLVM but my first cursory looks suggests it is nothing
> more than a way to represent a byte-code based application in a generic way
> so that it may be easily ported to any architecture.  Given that the JVM
> itself is not actually a Java byte-code application, how is this going to
> help with porting it?
>
> Getting JavaFX to run on Dalvik may be an easier option but I have heard
> rumours that Google are seriously looking to remove Java (and "Java-like"
> technologies such as Dalvik) from all their products in response to the
> legal wrangling with Oracle.  I expect Java support in their software will
> be deprecated and eventually phased-out altogether with GWT's Java
> fundamentals for example being replaced with Dart and so on.  I wouldn't be
> surprised to see the Android SDK being based on C++ in the not so distant
> future (or maybe even yet another "new" language).  And it's not just Oracle
> that Google has in its sights with the recent news that they are abandoning
> WebKit in favour of Blink which would appear to be driven more from its
> competition with Apple that any genuine technological need.  Don't worry, I
> know you cannot comment on any of these issues ;-)
>
> I am going to do my own research into what is available that may be suitable
> to form the basis of an iOS/Android VM capable of running JavaFX
> applications and will report back when I have some concrete results.
>
> -jct
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Bair [mailto:richard.bair at oracle.com]
> Sent: Saturday, 20 April 2013 11:32
> To: John C. Turnbull
> Cc: openjfx-dev at openjdk.java.net
> Subject: Re: JavaFX port to iOS/Android status
>
> The remainder of the iOS and Android code is slated to go out (along with
> the rest of Prism) early next week if all goes well. But these ports don't
> include a VM, so somebody from "the outside" is going to have to get it up
> and running on Dalvik or XMLVM or something. Certainly *not* an
> insurmountable challenge for one so motivated ;-)
>
> Richard
>
> On Apr 19, 2013, at 5:38 PM, John C. Turnbull <ozemale at ozemail.com.au>
> wrote:
>
>> What's the status of the JavaFX port to iOS and Android?  Has anyone
>> got seriously involved and started to make progress?  Is there someone
>> who is overseeing the project that I can contact?
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>>
>>
>> -jct
>>
>