JavaFX on Android build (instructions)

[Jonathan Giles]

Thanks Johan for stepping up to the plate on this one. Whilst I've not
been actively involved with the iOS and Android work, I have been
observing the community interest and progress. I was getting very close
to the point of proposing a similar project myself, as I was very
worried about community duplication of effort. I think if people
interested in this can rally around a single project then the progress
will be swifter and you can all share in the reward.

-- Jonathan

On 17/11/2013 7:53 a.m., Johan Vos wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Since I (and others) think it is very important that we can have
> JavaFX applications running on Android (and IOS, but in this mail I
> limit myself to Android), I created a bitbucket project containing
> code and build instructions to run JavaFX applications on Android.
>
> I didn't do much myself. Rather, this project is about providing easy
> and consistent build instructions. I combined information from this
> mailinglist with information I could find online, and with help from
> the JavaFX team.
>
> The project is here: https://bitbucket.org/johanvos/jfx78
>
> After I gathered the information, it didn't cost me much time to get
> HelloWorld running on my Samsung S3 mini. I never wrote an Android
> project before, and I never used the Android SDK or NDK before I
> started with this thing almost a week ago. Hence, it is not that hard
> to create a JavaFX application on Android.
>
> This project is far from finished. There are a number of things that
> have to be done:
> * Improve build instructions
> * Simplify build
> * Fix bugs (e.g. touch-events are not processed yet)
> * Manage the synchronization with the main JavaFX repo
> * create plugins for IDE's or maven to automatically build the Android packages
>
> I want to open this project at this early stage, though, since I think
> it is important to have more community input. Also, I want to give a
> shout to the world that JavaFX on Android is not a dream.
>
> I hope many of you try out the instructions, improve them, correct
> them, and test your applications on Android.
>
> Thanks a lot to all the people on this mailinglist for telling how
> they were dealing with JavaFX on Android. Again, I didn't write much
> code, but rather tried to combine the information and make it useful
> for everybody.
>
> I know there is an intense debate about the role of Oracle on the
> Android (and IOS) ports. Let me close with a similar situation. About
> 17 years ago (sigh, time flies), I was involved with the port of Java
> to Linux, as part of the Blackdown team. Initially, we didn't get much
> help from Sun Microsystems (it was even not easy to get the latest
> code). But once we showed that we could run the thing on Linux, and
> that many developers were interested in it, Sun started to add
> resources on this as well. Eventually, we became obsolete. I hope to
> reach the obsolete stage on this project as well.
>
> Again, the project can be found here:https://bitbucket.org/johanvos/jfx78
>
> - Johan