Michael,
I completely agree with you. I am Professor at a community college (NHTI) and
teach entry level courses to students who have just graduated from high school.
About a year ago (JDK 8 to 11), I started including Java FX in my Java course,
but after that I had to remove it (JDK > 11.03) as the Oracle examples on web
stopped working. I noticed that the textbook I use (Java, The Complete
Reference 11 ed, Oracle Press) also took Java FX out.
I really like JavaFX and I also teach Microsoft and Google (Android) courses.
For GUI, they also use similar technologies in WPF, UWP and Android
Development. It would be very helpful to make Java FX use easy again, so
students start using Java FX again. I tried for a while but gave as I don't
have to time to do all the research and install additional software.
M. Saleem Yusuf
-----Original Message-----
From: openjfx-dev <openjfx-dev-boun...@openjdk.java.net> On Behalf Of Michael
Paus
Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2020 6:01 AM
To: OpenJFX <openjfx-dev@openjdk.java.net>
Subject: Remove JavaFX JPMS enforcement
Getting started with JavaFX is made overly complicated by the fact that the use
of the module system is enforced by some code in the JDK. Especially for
beginners, who just want to get some small program running, this is almost
always a big source of frustration.
It is not very good marketing for JavaFX to make these initial steps such a
pain. If you need some evidence for this statement, then just follow JavaFX on
Stackoverflow or similar sites (and also this mailing list). Almost every day
you can read frustrated posts from helpless people who would just like to get
some JavaFX project running but are failing because they get lost in the module
system jungle.
In order to make JavaFX more easily accessible, especially for beginners, I'd
like to start a discussion here about the possibility to unconditionally remove
the JavaFX JPMS enforcement. IMHO this enforcement is simply not necessary and
is just the root for a lot of frustration with JavaFX. It should just be
possible to put all the JavaFX jars on the classpath (instead of the module
path) like you would do with any other external dependency in a non-modular
setup.
With a not very intuitive hack you can circumvent this problem already now.
Just add a line like this to the file which contains your main class extending
Application (MyApp).
class MyAppLauncher {public static void main(String[] args) {MyApp.main(args);}}
Because of this launcher it is now possible to put all dependencies and all
JavaFX jars on the classpath and to completely forget the module system with
all its intricacies and pitfalls.
But why should people be forced to use such dirty tricks? The better
alternative would be to just lift the current constraint.
I am using this trick for a long time now, even on bigger projects, and I have
never ever experienced any problem resulting from this. Even in theory I don't
know anything that could prevent a formally correct module jar to also work on
the classpath (which is of course not true the other way round). Therefore I
say that this constraint is just not necessary and only does a lot of damage to
JavaFXs reputation.
I'd now like to have some feedback of the community about this.
Michael
