The platform-specific code is a general Java issue that needs to be solved one day. Your suggestion basically comes down to moving the classfiles from the platform-specific jars into the empty jars, right? A problem with this is that currently, the jars are platform-dependent as well (e.g. no OpenGL on win).
Apart from that, your comments about libraries make sense: libraries don't care about platforms. But I think this could be better fixed at the level of the build tools (maven/gradle), combined with the module-info: if your library depends on e.g. javafx.controls, it should be enough to have that in your module-info.java. The current situation is an artificial semi-parallel dependency system, where dependencies are added with classifiers in e.g. build.gradle or pom.xml and without classifiers in module-info.java - Johan On Fri, Aug 24, 2018 at 11:34 PM Sam Carlberg <sam.carlb...@gmail.com> wrote: > As I see it, providing only platform-specific artifacts makes it difficult > or impossible for third-party JavaFX libraries or frameworks to depend on > the JavaFX API and pass it along to consumers. Libraries don't care about > the platform-specific code - that's up the final application to determine - > but are forced to arbitrarily choose one of the Windows, Mac, or Linux JARs > anyway. I suppose they could use a compileOnly configuration, but that > forces all downstream consumers to re-declare the JavaFX dependencies (and > keep track of the dependencies of the library, too!) > > IMO it makes more sense to publish the general API classes into a > classifier-less JAR (which are now the "empty JARs") and place the > platform-specific classes and binaries in platform-specific artifacts with > a different name. For example, JavaFX could have a "javafx-graphics" > artifact for the platform-agnostic classes, and a `java-graphics-platform" > for platform-specific code, with classifiers to specify the platform. This > does run into the "empty JAR" issue again, but it'd be limited in scope to > only the final application. > > -- > Sam Carlberg >
