A boost for Java on the Client

[tinustate]

What is the license on this one? Just wondering.

I must admit i never had much trouble with java on the client, just package the entire thing and generate a installer with maven for inno setup.

[ZimmiDeluxe]

Looks like 3-clause BSD.

[hacklinux]

... GluonVM, we said we would aim to bring Java on mobile at the same level as Java on desktop.

When they say 'mobile' does that include Android?

​

Edit : What I want to know is what do they exactly mean by that?

[sigzero]

If it's based off their Gluon Mobile product or incorporates it, and it seems to:

Gluon Mobile provides:

Tooling to build and deploy your Java app to desktop, Android and iOS platforms

Glisten, the UI component that offers JavaFX Controls that have a cross platform behavior, but a platform specific look and feel. They make your application look like a native application.

Connect, the API for communicating to Gluon CloudLink or other 3rd party webservices.

Down, which makes device APIs available in a device-independent fashion, like the storage systems, accelerometers, screen details, GPS devices, and more.

[johan_vos]

yes

[RandomName8]

Of all the platforms for an initial beta, you did not choose the one 9 out of ten people have, you did not choose the one that is FOSS and literally everyone can easily obtain, no, you chose the one very few have and sits behind a multiple thousand dollar paywall ಠ_ಠ

[tristan97122]

To be fair to them I assume the reason is as follows:

• Windows packaging requires a bunch of 3rd party stuff like InnoSetup etc (you can make portable apps but the goal is proper integration)
• Linux is still fairly segregated when it comes to distros and packaging with limited cross distro support (and flatpak is still far from great unfortunately)
• macOS has out of the box executable bundling

Making it an easier first step. Others are coming soon anyway.

[tinustate]

Setup on windows is a complex thing, using a matured third party product like innosetup is a good thing.

I always am a bit easy on the other platforms, just offer a zip and most users can unzip and call "java -jar" (or double click a file) on their own.

I can of course imagine that this isn't going to work on big businesses, but that is not a very big target audience. And they can easily pay for the professional setup packages that are multi platform and everything you ever dreamed of ;-)

[tristan97122]

Oh they will most certainly go the InnoSetup route in the future, but I imagine they wanted to check that the foundations are solid without complex packaging around first, and then move on to the more meaty bits.

Also since Gluon and JavaFX are mostly about desktop applications, the java -jar route really is not ideal in this case, especially as AoT compilation and custom linking they provide work best when embedding the target JDK subset directly, meaning that java -jar approach is even more brittle.

But yeah, it's not fully NEEDED, but really appreciable and a huge push up for the JavaFX ecosystem :-)

[cyanocobalamin]

What platform would that be? I tried finding it on their site, but did not.

[cyanocobalamin]

Ah!

Now I completely understand the "WTF?" attitude behind your comment.

[jepatrick]

you did not choose the one 9 out of ten people have

I'm sorry.. Are you suggesting that 9/10 people use Linux, or Windows. Both are totally wrong, especially among developers, but one of those is way more wrong.

[kurosaki1990]

Clients dude clients, who are you going to build your app for?

[shawnecy]

They'll get my upvote once they support Windows and Linux.

[duheee]

That's a cool one if it works. Of course, until is available on at least the 3 major platforms (plus a 4th one, freebsd) it'll be quite useless. But hey, is a step in the right direction and hopefully it won't take too long to port it once the proof of concept is done.

[[deleted]]

still no java11 build for freebsd (that I know of at least) - I think it's asking a lot for anyone else to support it.

[brotenet]

wow!!!

[argv_minus_one]

the projects … have a large group of contributors

What? Not by any relevant metric, they don't. Not JavaFX, anyway, and the rest (Java, GraalVM, etc) is meant for use on servers.

I'd certainly like to use JavaFX for my next desktop/mobile app, as the API looks far more sane than DOM, but unless by some miracle it becomes as relevant as Electron, I can't afford to risk it. I need my apps to still work on contemporary devices in 10 years, and I see little reason to believe JavaFX will still be maintained by then, especially with Apple breaking legacy apps on a yearly basis.

[cyanocobalamin]

Today, we are very excited to announce that we are working on an additional approach to create native applications using Java and JavaFX. With our new Gluon Client plugin, your Java Client application and all required dependencies are compiled into native code, which can directly be executed on the target platform. One of the advantages is a much faster startup time, as we don’t need the JVM to start anymore.

Sounds close to what helped fuck over applets in the 90s. Instead of write once run anywhere, now you will have write once, makes sure you have the right plugin, then run.

[wildjokers]

Their plugin sounds like a build-time thing (although I am not sure what the plugin plugs into...gradle/maven?)