Does Java 8 delay mean less app developer feedback?

[Kevin Rushforth]

We do not plan to spend any energy on a JDK8-less FX 8. Starting as 
early as next week, FX 8 will cease to build on JDK 7 (we just switched 
to using JDK 8 to build for this weeks b88 EA build). The new SwingNode 
feature already requires JDK 8 to build and run. Because the code that 
requires JDK 8 is in entirely new class files that no existing class 
files depend on, the developers made the compilation of those classes 
conditional (in the ant scripts) based on the JDK being used to build 
FX, but that will likely not be the case for other features.

For example, the new DatePicker control relies on JDK 8 to build and run 
and there is no plan to make the compilation conditional. Also, the 
gradle build requires JDK8 for building the javadocs, and does not 
include the conditional compilation for SwingNode, etc.

I can't speak to whether we could avoid using JDK 8 language features 
(such as Lambda). Richard will have to answer that one.

-- Kevin


Mario Torre wrote:
> On Thu, 2013-05-02 at 08:56 -0700, Richard Bair wrote:
>   
>> I don't think Danno was making light of it at all, but rather was looking at "how can we solve this problem without waiting for Oracle"? which is pretty dang reasonable IMO.
>>
>> 1) Once OpenJFX is fully opensourced, could the v8 targeted branch be compiled to run on JDK 7?
>>
>> So this question is basically asking, when OpenJFX is fully open, can it be built and targeted at 7? In other words, maybe for your produce you could use OpenJDK and OpenJFX instead of Oracle's provided JavaFX 2.x? If this worked, then you could use the latest FX with an older JRE.
>>     
>
> I'm of course very interested in 1) myself.
>
> I would like to see the code base of what will be JavaFX 8.0, JDK 8
> "free". Of course this also means to use a pre-release since OpenJFX 8.0
> "1.0" will only be released when OpenJDK 8 will hit the shelves, which
> basically means I'm lost with all the numbering :)
>
> But on a more serious point, I think it would be good to have the first
> OpenJFX 8 release to be JDK 7 compatible, and then move on it's
> development by gradually introducing JKD8 features, reaching a JDK9
> release which is JKD8 compatible, and so on...
>
> Cheers,
> Mario
>
>
>