HEADS-UP: jfxrt.jar moving to jre/lib/ext

[Kevin Rushforth]

The schedule for JDK 8 is posted here:

http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk8/

The current planned GA date is Sep 9, 2013.

-- Kevin


Daniel Zwolenski wrote:
> Awesome. One small step, one giant leap! This will be a major 
> annoyance factor removed.
>
> I'm not too up on the release dates, what date is this scheduled to go 
> and be released to general public end users (as opposed to developer 
> releases)? I need to make some changes to the Maven plugin (and docco) 
> as a result of this, which I need to try and schedule around my 
> availability. 
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 11:53 AM, Kevin Rushforth 
> <kevin.rushforth at oracle.com <mailto:kevin.rushforth at oracle.com>> wrote:
>
>     Regarding the following JIRA issues:
>
>     http://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-26125
>     http://ccc.us.oracle.com/8003171 (CCC for above work)
>
>     http://bugs.sun.com/view_bug.do?bug_id=8001533 (already
>     implemented in the JDK)
>
>     As a heads-up, I plan to push the changes that will move jfxrt.jar
>     from its present location in jre/lib to its new home in
>     jre/lib/ext, hopefully in time for next week's EA build of JDK
>     8-b75. In conjunction with the recent launcher changes, this will
>     have some impact that may be visible to applications (mostly in a
>     good way, but there are some caveats).
>
>     1) jfxrt.jar will now be on the default application classpath used
>     by javac and java (and javap, etc). This means self-packaged apps
>     and apps run from class files no longer need to explicitly add
>     jfxrt.jar to the classpath.
>
>     2) The java 8 launcher will now directly launch Java applictions
>     from a jar file, even if they weren't created with the
>     javafxpackager program or ant tasks. Further, the java launcher
>     will now directly launch Java applictions from class files. In
>     both of these cases the JavaFX application launcher will be called
>     in preference to the main() method of the application's Main-Class.
>
>     3) Tools, scripts, programs that "know" where jfxrt.jar is
>     relative to the root of the JRE will have to be adjusted
>     accordingly, to either look for it in lib/ext or, if appropriate,
>     just rely on the fact that it is now on the classpath. For
>     example, when opening a JavaFX project in NB 7.2, it may not
>     recognize your JDK8 as being JavaFX-capable. A future version of
>     NB will add support for JDK 8 / FX 8.
>
>     4) Because we still include the javafx.embed.swt package in
>     jfxrt.jar -- see http://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-23041 --
>     applications that access javafx.embed.swt.FXCanvas will need to
>     put the swt.jar library on the boot classpath in order for it to run.
>
>     Let me know if you have any questions.
>
>     -- Kevin
>
>