The (dark) future of Java on desktop

Jo winfixit at gmail.com
Mon Apr 16 18:44:59 UTC 2018


Good news! Who needs Oracle anyway :-)

Polyglot

2018-04-16 20:36 GMT+02:00 Vincent Privat <vincent.privat at gmail.com>:

> Hello,
> I got in contact with Jiri Vanek. He might be our saviour.
> As some of you may know, he's the one behind IcedTea-Web (ITW: the free &
> open-source implementation of Java WebStart in the IcedTea project):
> https://icedtea.classpath.org/wiki/IcedTea-Web
>
> The project is still actively developed (the 1.8 version is in progress).
> http://icedtea.classpath.org/hg/icedtea-web/
>
> Last year, Jiri added support for Windows, which I validated with the
> RedHat build.
> Jiri's also part of the AdoptOpenJdk initiative which aimes to provide a
> build farm of OpenJDK with certified binaries on all platforms:
> https://adoptopenjdk.net/releases.html
>
> If I understood correctly, these builds are going to provide JavaFX and ITW
> once the version 1.8 is finished!
>
> So we have to test ITW on Windows and macOS to make sure it works with Java
> 10 and early builds of Java 11. Then we'll have to check if it still works
> once Oracle completely removes Java WebStart (I don't know the impacts it
> could have on ITW).
>
> I'm currently trying to build & test ITW on Windows.
>
> Cheers,
> Vincent
>
> 2018-04-11 20:41 GMT+02:00 Vincent Privat <vincent.privat at gmail.com>:
>
> > One month already and I still don't know what to do regarding WebStart.
> > I found out this: https://developers.redhat.com/
> products/openjdk/download/
> > Red Hat is providing an implementation of OpenJDK 8 on Windows
> containing:
> > - OpenJDK
> > - OpenJFX
> > - WebStart based on IcedTea-Web
> > - An auto-update feature (a small simple script registered to Windows
> Task
> > Scheduler)
> >
> > The good news:
> > - This is exactly what we would need for JDK 11.
> > - I tested it and it works perfectly. We have nothing to change in JOSM
> to
> > make it work with this runtime.
> >
> > The bad news:
> > - It is only available to Java developers. A (free) RedHat account is
> > required, and it is forbidden to redistribute it.
> > - there is a version of Java 9 but it does only contain OpenJDK (thus it
> > is useless)
> > - there is no macOS runtime
> >
> > Does someone on this list has a professionnal RedHat account, or know
> > someone there? I'd like to know if we can hope to see RedHat releasing
> > OpenJDK 11 it as a public runtime, free or charge and not requiring a
> user
> > account, which would contain the same components as their OpenJDK 8
> > version. This way we would only have to tell people to uninstall their
> > Oracle runtime and install the Red Hat runtime instead.
> >
> >
> > 2018-03-10 18:05 GMT+01:00 Vincent Privat <vincent.privat at gmail.com>:
> >
> >> If we were to abandon AWT/Swing, migrating to SWT might be another
> >> option. I don't think it would be easy, but at least it's actively
> >> maintained: https://www.openhub.net/p/swt/contributors/summary
> >>
> >> 2018-03-09 10:40 GMT+01:00 Dirk Stöcker <openstreetmap at dstoecker.de>:
> >>
> >>> On Thu, 8 Mar 2018, Richard wrote:
> >>>
> >>> On Thu, Mar 08, 2018 at 08:36:21AM +0100, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> You could sit down today and re-implement everything in, say, C++, and
> >>>>> it would be relatively straightforward, and while the result would
> not
> >>>>> share any of JOSM's codebase, it would still encapsulate all the
> >>>>> experience and brainpower that has flown into JOSM development over
> the
> >>>>> years.
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> true in principle but you would need a protable GUI that doesn't suck
> or
> >>>> you end up programming for at least 3 platforms with 3 sets of bugs,
> >>>> 3 sets of dependencies etc.
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> Reimplementing an existing software like JOSM which has an estimated
> >>> cost of more than hundred development years (
> >>> https://www.openhub.net/p/josm) in another language in an non-profit
> OS
> >>> application is doomed to fail in my eyes. The motivation for a
> programmer
> >>> to take an existing software and reimplement everything again is low.
> For a
> >>> very long time you will not have something which is usable and
> inbetween
> >>> you have tasks to do, but no positive feedback. That may work when the
> >>> people are paid for it, but not when programmers need to be motivated.
> I'd
> >>> consider people beeing motived by such a task very strange. :-)
> >>>
> >>> Rather than that if JOSM really dies some of the better ideas of it
> will
> >>> be taken and implemented in existing or new software (which BTW is
> already
> >>> happening, e.g. osmosis taking the Validator MapCSS or many other
> things).
> >>>
> >>> If there is a way to automatically convert the code and start with a
> >>> working base, then the situation is different...
> >>>
> >>> But I also don't think this is necessary (ATM).
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Ciao
> >>> --
> >>> http://www.dstoecker.eu/ (PGP key available)
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >
>


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