[External] : Re: Proposal: Bump minimum JDK for JavaFX 24 to JDK 22

[Kevin Rushforth]

It's more an evolving realization that there is little benefit to the 
OpenJFX community to force JavaFX to be tied to an LTS release of the 
JDK, and a cost to doing so (both in additional testing, opportunity 
cost of using new features, etc). LTS releases are about stability and 
support; if an app developer wants to use the latest features, they can 
grab JDK N and JavaFX N. If they want stability, they can use an LTS of 
both. Brian Goetz and Georges Saab have done a good job of advocating 
the benefits of this at recent conferences.

-- Kevin


On 10/2/2024 8:10 AM, Nir Lisker wrote:
> I was advocated  to bump to JDK 22 last year, with FFM as a main 
> reason to replace sun.misc.Unsafe [1], so of course I endorse this. 
> The main rebuttal was that companies prefer to use LTS versions 
> (although any distributor can declare any version as LTS), so I wonder 
> if these considerations still take precedence or if FFM is too 
> important to wait with.
>
> - Nir
>
> [1] 
> https://mail.openjdk.org/pipermail/openjfx-dev/2023-December/044081.html
>
> On Wed, Oct 2, 2024 at 5:45 PM Kevin Rushforth 
> <kevin.rushforth at oracle.com> wrote:
>
>     All,
>
>     Even though we build JavaFX 24 binaries with JDK 22 (and soon will
>     build
>     with JDK 23) as the boot JDK, the latest version of JavaFX still runs
>     with JDK 21, although it isn't tested with older JDK versions. In
>     order
>     for JavaFX to be able to use newer JDK features, such as FFM
>     (Panama),
>     we need to increase the minimum version of the JDK that can run the
>     latest JavaFX. Additionally, there is an ongoing cost to keeping
>     JavaFX
>     buildable and runnable on older versions of Java, and very little
>     reason
>     to continue to do so.
>
>     To this end, I propose to bump the minimum version of the JDK
>     needed to
>     run JavaFX 24 to JDK 22. I filed JDK-8340003 [1] to track this and
>     prepared Draft PR  #1588 [2]. This will *not* affect update
>     releases of
>     earlier versions of JavaFX (e.g., JavaFX 23.0.NN or JavaFX 21.0.NN),
>     which will continue to run with the same minimum JDK that they run
>     on today.
>
>     The main driver for this is that we need to convert the memory
>     management methods used by Marlin from sun.misc.Unsafe to something
>     else, both for Java2D and JavaFX, and the natural choice is to use
>     FFM
>     (Panama), which is what will be done for Java2D. We want to do the
>     same
>     for JavaFX, which requires bumping the minimum to JDK 22. See
>     JDK-8334137 [3].
>
>     NOTE: this will not be an invitation to do wholesale refactoring of
>     existing classes or methods to use newer language features (e.g.,
>     a PR
>     that refactors existing switch statements and switch expressions into
>     pattern-matching switch expressions would not be welcome). Rather,
>     this
>     can be seen as enabling judicious use of new features in new code,
>     much
>     as we did when we started allowing the use of "var", records, and
>     pattern-matching instanceof.
>
>     As a reminder, our stated position is that: A) we ensure that
>     JavaFX N
>     runs on JDK N-1 or later; and B) we encourage developers to use
>     JDK N to
>     run JavaFX N. It follows from this that if developers want to run
>     their
>     application on an LTS of the JDK, they should also get a
>     corresponding
>     LTS of JavaFX.
>
>     Up until now we've been pretty conservative about bumping the minimum
>     JDK version, and we've chosen an LTS version. However, this has never
>     been a hard requirement nor guarantee; whether or not the minimum
>     happens to be an LTS should not be consideration. In the future, we
>     could consider bumping the minimum version more automatically to,
>     say,
>     JDK N-2, which could be done fairly shortly after the fork for
>     each new
>     feature release. This proposal doesn't do that, but we could have a
>     follow-on discussion as to whether to consider that.
>
>     Comments are welcome.
>
>     -- Kevin
>
>     [1] https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8340003
>     [2] https://github.com/openjdk/jfx/pull/1588
>     <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://github.com/openjdk/jfx/pull/1588__;!!ACWV5N9M2RV99hQ!InHIRuBw3LOCE7wSivJoWkEgwW92mvZECzqG47D15a1E7kVIG_yZUW-QiFYu07mpldZ48t0V4nLv0aVwnS7v$>
>     [3] https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8334137
>
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