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

[Jeff Martin]

I think the CheerpJ roadmap is really based on customer demand and their limited resources (which makes total sense - and they are already heroes in my book). So they really need a paying customer or a corporate sponsor like Oracle to step up in this case.

I think their approach to JavaFX support will be to use the Linux x86 version transpiled to WASM along with custom versions of Linux OpenGL drivers. They built a nice POC of this with their Minecraft and LWJGL demo, but without customer demand, it doesn’t look like we’ll see JavaFX this year. It’s definitely not in the current release.

As an aside, it sure would be nice if Oracle and/or Gluon could offer them support and encouragement (and maybe $upport). I believe Java in the browser is the most important thing now that could help the whole “paving the on-ramp” effort. Lack of browser support may have been the original sin of JavaFX. :-)

jeff


> On Jan 29, 2026, at 12:45 AM, Michael Paus <mp at jugs.org> wrote:
> 
> Coming back to the original question. CheerpJ has the following statement on their roadmap page.
> 
> 
> "Thanks to this feature, CheerpJ 4.0 will also introduce initial support for JavaFX, and will create the foundations to provide full support for SWT future releases. The support for these toolkits in CheerpJ marks a clear intention to allow most UI-based Java Desktop applications to run in CheerpJ."
> 
> Isn't that exactly what you wanted? The latest version by the way is 4.2, so this feature should already be available.
> 
> Michael
> 
> Am 28.01.26 um 23:22 schrieb Jeff Martin:
>> JPro definitely seems amazing for deployment - but wouldn’t help with my use case (building/running JavaFX apps client side in the browser).
>> 
>> jeff
>> 
>> 
>>> On Jan 27, 2026, at 3:16 AM, Dirk Lemmermann <dlemmermann at gmail.com> <mailto:dlemmermann at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Are you familiar with JPro? It lets you run JavaFX in the browser. We use it for the jfxcentral website.
>>> 
>>> Dirk Lemmermann 
>>> 
>>> CEO Senapt GmbH
>>> CEO DLSC Software & Consulting GmbH
>>> Zurich, Switzerland
>>> +41-(0)79-800-23-20
>>> http://www.dlsc.com <http://www.dlsc.com/>
>>> mailto:dlemmermann at gmail.com <mailto:dlemmermann at gmail.com>
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Jeff Martin <jeff at reportmill.com <mailto:jeff at reportmill.com>> schrieb am Mo. 26. Jan. 2026 um 20:45:
>>>> Thanks Kevin! I admit I was mostly asking out of curiosity - I would love to see more JavaFX in the browser. It looks like the WebFX project is doing some great things there though. :-)
>>>> 
>>>> jeff
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> Kevin Rushforth kevin.rushforth at oracle.com <http://oracle.com/>
>>>>> Fri Jan 23 21:56:45 UTC 2026
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 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 Jan 23, 2026, at 1:58 PM, Jeff Martin <jeff at reportmill.com <mailto:jeff at reportmill.com>> 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
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>> 

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