JavaFX and JDK for ARM

[Kevin Rushforth]

Many of you have been asking about the status of JavaFX in Linux/ARM 
embedded platforms. Starting with 8u33, JavaFX has been removed from 
both Oracle JDK for ARM and Oracle Java SE Embedded. [1]

This is a resource trade off within Oracle. Included in that difficult 
trade off decision was the ongoing investment needed to properly support 
FX in a world where so much the hardware is not standardized -- it 
really is difficult to have enough hardware and testing resources 
committed to support FX on ARM. It is important to understand that when 
we say support, we are not talking about just "running" on a device like 
the Raspberry PI -- but providing support for paying customers that are 
almost certainly going to be using hardware that is customized for their 
embedded product.

This does not mean that FX is going away on other platforms, and 
hopefully does not mean we will be disappearing from ARM completely.

The core JavaFX team will continue working on the ARM port as resources 
permit, hopefully with involvement of members of the OpenJFX community. 
We have continued to demonstrate this commitment with the moving all of 
the JavaFX sources to OpenJFX, and maintaining an up to date OpenJFX 
Wiki which includes detailed articles on building for ARM.

We will continue to do what we can to make it easier to build and 
overlay OpenJFX on top of the ARM JDKs.

We hope to arrange for a external build of OpenJFX for ARM so that more 
people will be able to easily obtain a current build.

Most of the FX source code is shared across all ports, and we will 
continue to do regular internal builds of linux-armv6hf to ensure that 
it runs. We will continue to maintain the Monocle glass platform in any 
case, as we use it for some of our dektop unit tests.

We have received a lot of help from the community -- particularly for 
iOS and Android. Now we hope we can work together to keep Linux ARM 
viable and interesting.

-- Kevin Rushforth and David Hill


[1] For more information on the decision, I refer you to the following 
statement from Dalibor Topic and Donald Smith that Dalibor posted to the 
Raspberry Pi forum.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=97367&p=678791#p678791

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Apologies for the terse release note regarding this change to the Oracle 
JDK for ARM and Oracle Java SE Embedded products. Clearly this change 
should have come with more context.

Starting with Oracle JDK for ARM 8u33 and Oracle Java SE Embedded 8u33, 
JavaFX Embedded, a port of JavaFX 8 which was only available on 
Linux/ARM platforms, is not supported, and has been removed from these 
downloads.

The complete source code for JavaFX Embedded has been contributed to the 
OpenJFX open source project in the OpenJDK community under the GPL v2 
with Classpath exception license. JavaFX development has been done in 
the OpenJDK open source community for some time now, enabling JavaFX 
developers to contribute back their changes to the source code, and 
produce their own OpenJFX binaries for their target platforms under 
their own responsibility.

JavaFX continues to be provided as a fully supported part of the Oracle 
JDK 8 product on x86 platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac).
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