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

[John Smith]

That's really great, thanks for pushing that through Kevin!

-----Original Message-----
From: openjfx-dev-bounces at openjdk.java.net [mailto:openjfx-dev-bounces at openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of Kevin Rushforth
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 4:53 PM
To: openjfx-dev at openjdk.java.net
Subject: HEADS-UP: jfxrt.jar moving to jre/lib/ext

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