Preview features for JavaFX

[Robert Lichtenberger]

Seems like a good idea to me. From an application developer point of 
view I don't care if new parts are super-stable (they never really are). 
If they are marked as preview I'll take that as an additional caveat to 
not rely on API stability, etc.


Robert

Am 06.02.24 um 04:19 schrieb Michael Strauß:
> The discussion around the new Platform Preferences API has brought up
> a potential area where the API may lack a way to detect whether a
> particular preference is supported on a particular operating system
> [0].
>
> Discussions like these will invariably come up when new API is
> released, and some of the real-world insights may prove to be very
> valuable. However, with the current development process, we specify
> and implement new features largely without feedback from application
> developers. I know that, in principle, developers can join in on the
> discussion on this mailing list. But the reality is that GA is the
> first time that a new feature gets wider exposure.
>
> All of this makes it very hard for us to ship new features, since we
> must be extremely careful to get it right the first time. The JDK uses
> incubator modules and preview features to address these challenges. It
> seems that OpenJFX will also potentially use an incubator module to
> introduce new controls [1].
>
> This is great for modular features, but not so great for new API that
> is added to existing infrastructure. Maybe we could add something akin
> to preview features to OpenJFX: this could be as easy as documenting
> the new API to be in preview, or decorate the new API with a
> @PreviewFeature annotation. I don't think that it is necessary to go
> beyond simple documentation; in particular, we don't need this to be
> integrated with the Java compiler.
>
> Documenting new features to be preview features will enable us to ship
> features quicker, and ensure that what we're building is actually
> useful in the real world because we can actually go back and improve
> aspects of a feature without worrying as much about backwards
> compatibility.
>
> In particular, my suggestion is to ship the new Platform Preferences
> API as a preview feature for jfx22.
>
>
> [0] https://mail.openjdk.org/pipermail/openjfx-dev/2024-February/045176.html
> [1] https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8309381