Is it possible to create minimal 'software-only' architecture implementation of JavaFX using Java2D/AWT?

[Kevin Rushforth]

No, this isn't possible. Many of the pieces are there to do something 
along these lines, but even our software renderer uses native code.

A combination of the experimental headless glass toolkit, the software 
pipeline, and JFXPanel might get you most of the way there, but it would 
take a fair bit of effort to get it to the point where it was usable 
without any native code. And if you wanted an ordinary JavaFX 
Application (as opposed to a JFXPanel embedded in a Swing app) to run it 
would be even more work.

Long ago (before JDK 7) the predecessor to Glass and the Prism rendering 
pipeline had an AWT-based implementation of the Windowing toolkit and a 
Java2D-based renderer, but those are long gone (except for the "j2d" 
renderer, which morphed into a printing pipeline).

I doubt this is a direction we would be interested in exploring again.

-- Kevin


On 1/23/2026 11:58 AM, Jeff Martin wrote:
> I wonder, is the architecture independent part of JavaFX written in 
> 100% Java? If so, would it be possible to write a minimal architecture 
> implementation using Java2D/AWT, so many JavaFX apps could run with 
> just the standard JVM?
>
> I see the repo stats say that ~73% of JavaFX is written in C/C++, and 
> obviously Java2D wouldn’t help with the 3D features or WebView, but a 
> “software only” JavaFX version could be interesting and let many 
> JavaFX apps run in the browser with CheerpJ.
>
> jeff
>
> PS - I did ask AI, but it’s unclear to me whether the architecture 
> independent code drops into C before it uses platform dependent code. 
> I’m guessing that it does.
>
> https://chatgpt.com/share/6973d226-513c-8013-bcc1-0b70ec07a465
>