Preview features for JavaFX

[Christopher Schnick]

I would add that during the 6 month release cycle, there is usually some 
time to get new features out in an ea release and receive early feedback 
that way. Maybe even in time that it can be incorporated into the next 
release if it is reasonable.

In this concrete case there was no ea build available in maven central 
for 3 months that contained this new feature, so barely anyone used it. 
As an application developer that likes to try out new features, I would 
like to see more frequent maven releases, although I'm not sure how much 
work that is and if it is automated. Even if it is not possible to 
publish every early access release to maven, maybe push a maven release 
out on important points during development of the current release rather 
than in fixed intervals. One such important point would have been the 
release of the platform preferences. I see now that there is another ea 
release available on maven after a gap of 3 months, but that one does 
not contain the fix for Windows color schemes, so any Windows ea user 
will get a nonfunctional feature.

Plus making maybe a small announcement when a new larger feature has 
been released for the first time in early access and linking to the 
appropriate maven release would result in a good real world test 
coverage and discussions with other developers.

Best
Christopher

On 2/6/2024 8:32 AM, Robert Lichtenberger wrote:
> 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