Announcing EA builds of standalone JavaFX SDK

[Michael Paus]

Hi,
a few days ago I was informed in a private e-mail from Bernhard Lutzmann 
how the problem with Eclipse described below can be solved without 
having to provide a module-info.java. The problem in Eclipse is that, 
although the JavaFX jars are explicitly put on the module path in the 
build configuration, this is not copied over to the runtime 
configuration. So each time when you create a new runtime configuration 
you have to go to the dependencies tab in the runtime configuration 
editor and manually remove the JavaFX jars form the classpath and then 
add them one by one to the module path again. I consider this annoying 
behaviour a bug and have thus filed a corresponding bug report.

<https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=534572>

Michael

Am 09.05.18 um 13:39 schrieb Michael Paus:
> Hi,
> I investigated the issue of using the standalone JavaFX SDK inside of 
> an IDE (Eclipse and IntelliJ) a little bit further. For this purpose I 
> used a simple single-class JavaFX program (actually the one which 
> Johan used too).
>
> I started with Eclipse, created a simple Java project, added the JFX 
> jars to the module path and added the --add-modules command to the 
> runtime configuration. The result is: this works at compile time but 
> not at runtime.
>
> Then I tried the same with IntelliJ. (I have to admit though that I 
> have never seriously used IntelliJ before.) I created the project, 
> added the dependencies and configured the runtime. The result is: the 
> same error as in Eclipse.
>
> The advantage of IntelliJ though is that it directly shows you the 
> command line which was created to launch the application. The problem 
> seems to be that IntelliJ (in the same way as Eclipse) just puts the 
> JavaFX dependencies on the classpath and not on the module path. The 
> only way I found to fix this was to add a module-info.java to the 
> project.
>
> module projavafx.helloearthrise.ui {
>     requires javafx.graphics;
>     requires javafx.controls;
>     exports projavafx.helloearthrise.ui;
> }
>
> After that you don't need the --add-modules command anymore.
>
> After adding this the setup immediately worked in IntelliJ. In Eclipse 
> however the program could now be launched and there was no error or 
> warning but the program just hangs and does not show anything on the 
> screen. By looking at the generated command line via "ps -ef | grep 
> java" I found that Eclipse is adding this option 
> "-XstartOnFirstThread" which makes the program hang. There is a switch 
> in the Eclipse runtime configuration dialog, which is selected by 
> default, and which causes Eclipse to use this option when it thinks it 
> is launched with SWT. This is caused by the fact that I have created a 
> library (like Nir suggested) into which I put all jars of the JavaFX 
> SDK, also the javafx-swt.jar one although it is not needed here. This 
> has never been a problem before the split between JDK and JFX. This 
> problem can be fixed by either switching off the startOnFirstThread 
> option in the runtime configuration or by just not adding the 
> javafx-swt.jar.
>
> So, my conclusion for the moment is that you can only use the split 
> JDK/JFX in Eclipse/IntelliJ when your main project has a 
> module-info.java. This may be a problem if you are not yet ready or 
> willing to modularize your application.
>
> If somebody knows a trick to get around this limitation I'd be happy 
> to here about it.
>
> Michael
>
>
> Am 08.05.18 um 14:39 schrieb Michael Paus:
>> Am 08.05.18 um 14:27 schrieb Tom Schindl:
>>> [...]
>>>
>>>> 3. How do you properly configure an Eclipse (the latest 4.7.3a) 
>>>> project
>>>> to use this module path. Adding the OpenJDK was no problem but how do
>>>> you add the module path for JavaFX? I failed on that.
>>>>
>>> You just open the Java Build Path-Properties-Page on the project and 
>>> add
>>> the external jars, not?
>>>
>>> Tom
>>
>> That's one of the ways I tried it but ...
>>
>> 1. is that the intended way of doing it? On the command line you just 
>> specify a single folder.
>>
>> 2. I did this and it resolved all dependencies at compile time but I 
>> got an exception at runtime
>>
>> Error occurred during initialization of boot layer
>> java.lang.module.FindException: Module javafx.fxml not found
>>
>> although I also added
>>
>> --add-modules=javafx.fxml,javafx.controls,javafx.web,javafx.media
>>
>> as VM arguments.
>>
>