JavaFX 8u40 EA for Android

[Danno Ferrin]

On Nov 26, 2014, at 12:39 PM, Johan Vos <johan at lodgon.com> wrote:

> Hi Danno,
> 
> Is it possible to execute a gradle script as part of the (external) bundler?

Possible, yes.  I don't think it is a good idea.  The bundler would need to depend on a gradle runtime and stand a build dir up and call it.  Which would make maven and nested gradle builds a mess.

If the build is deeply integrated to the way gradle does things, it bodes poorly for a stand alone packager.  Of couse it seems to me that android is deeply embedding itself with gradle so this may be unavoidable.

> We have a rather simple build.gradle file that uses the android plugin and that has almost no metadata (if your application uses external libraries, they have to be added in the dependency section). I added the structure of the simple HelloAndroid demo in attachment. 
> 
> The reason I want to use this gradle script is that it leverages the android plugin which does all the work (convert to dex, build packages etc). We used to do this with an ant build, but that is much more complex.
> 

That's the point of the bundler.  Move it from point A to point B and hiding all of the crazy inner details.

> Before I write down the details, it would be nice to hear if this is possible with the current hooks in the packager:
> 1. create a build.gradle file based on a template and on some metadata (the application jar and external dependencies)
> 2. also create a AndroidManifest.xml file based on a template and some more metadata (the name of the application, optionally the minimal android version that is required, an icon,...)
> 3. download the android SDK and JavaFX-Dalvik SDK in case the user doesn't have this yet. The locations of those 2 files are used by the build.gradle file in step 1
> 4. run the gradle command to execute the gradle script. There are different commands for creating packages (debug/release) and/or for installing them on a device (to test).
> 
> If this approach is not feasable, I will try to break down the functionality of the Android plugin into a number of steps.
> 

It is possible, we basically do this for all the bundlers, set up some files and the hand off to InnoSetup, or WiX, or rpm, or dpkg, or mac tools.

So that would increase the build reqs to require that Android SDK is installed, the gradle plugin is installed, and gradle is installed somewhere.  Are there default/recommended locations for those installs?  (at least per platform, one for win, one for Mac, one for linux).  Or should I sniff the PATH?

> Thanks,
> 
> - Johan
> 
> 
> 
> 2014-11-26 20:02 GMT+01:00 Danno Ferrin <danno.ferrin at oracle.com>:
> 
> On Nov 26, 2014, at 11:11 AM, Johan Vos <johan at lodgon.com> wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> >
> > Earlier today, I uploaded an early access build of the JavaFX 8u40 SDK for
> > Android (Dalvik). See
> > https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/javafxandroid/hOYMtMhl3HQ/GjwM-YPbUzQJ
> > for the announcement.
> >
> > The source code for this build is in
> > https://bitbucket.org/javafxports/8u40-rt and that repository started as a
> > mirror of the OpenJFX 8udev at November 15 (so we're not behind too much).
> > It is my intention to go over all changes that I had to apply, and to
> > propose them as patches for OpenJFX. However, I took some shortcuts in a
> > few issues that would pollute the OpenJFX tree, hence I need some time to
> > cleanup first.
> >
> > Apart from support for 8u40, the 2 major things in this EA release are:
> >
> > 1) we are now using Monocle instead of Lens. That is, we use the Monocle
> > Glass implementation, but still use the Prism eglfb implementation. Long
> > story on why this is the case, but eventually we will use monocle there as
> > well.
> >
> > 2) we have now support for the android gradle plugin. As a consequence, a
> > JavaFX project with a single build.gradle file can be used to generate an
> > Android Package and install it on a device.
> > This will make life of developers much easier.
> >
> > I think there are 2 more things that are needed in order to lower the
> > barrier for developers:
> > 1) IDE integration. With the single build.gradle file, this should be
> > possible, but I have zero experience in developing plugins.
> > 2) java(fx)packager integration. It would be so nice if we could just build
> > Android packages using the Java Packager. Would this be an option?
> >
> > - Johan
> 
> This is (now) possible.  I don't think it would be distributed with the Oracle JDK but I put the hooks in for 8u20 to allow external bundlers to be used by the bundling engine.  so it can be distributed as a library to be used by the plugin.
> 
> What I need is a list of instructions on what to do, including software that is assumed to be installed.  If the instructions would start from the user providing a set of jars for a JavaFX desktop application, and enumerating what metadata beyond that needs to be provided I could automate the rest.
> 
> <javafxandroidstructure.zip>