Our current practice, as discussed in this thread [1], is to update the
minimum to a JDK LTS release. I would be reluctant to adopt a non-LTS
release as the minimum and based on the responses the last time we
raised this question, I suspect there would be other voices even more
reluctant.
For the specific case of using Panama FFM or unnamed variable patterns,
I don't see sufficient benefit to applications to justify it. These
features would only be something used by JavaFX internals and wouldn't
show up in any public API.
I do support bumping the minimum to JDK 21 in JavaFX 23, and was already
planning to propose doing so early in the JavaFX 23 release.
-- Kevin
[1] https://mail.openjdk.org/pipermail/openjfx-dev/2022-July/034874.html
On 12/5/2023 12:28 AM, Nir Lisker wrote:
Hi all,
Panama's 'foreign' API will be released in JDK 22 [1][2]. It includes
'foreign memory' API for managing off-heap java memory, and 'foreign
function' API for calling native functions. These replace some
sun.misc.unsafe operations and all JNI.
We should start allowing developers to use the new APIs as they
greatly improve many aspects of the code (safer, simpler and possibly
more performant). I have used the foreign function API in other
projects since its incubation period (Java 18 or 19) and I can say
that it works well and causes much less headache than JNI, although I
didn't do a performance comparison in those cases.
We should also think about replacing code with the new API. JavaFX
uses sun.miscs.Unsafe in MarlinFX, and JNI is used extensively. While
it's unreasonable (and at this point undesirable due to manpower
constraints) to replace all of JNI, there are places where this
approach should be looked at. The use of Unsafe also emits warnings,
which we are trying to avoid.
I therefore propose that JavaFX 23 bump its Java requirement to 22,
maintaining the "N-1 guarantee". I think that this is a significant
enough addition that merits this version bump, and will also bring
with it all the previous features starting with Java 18, out of which
some useful ones are:
* Code Snippets [3] (18)
* Record Patterns [4] (21)
* Pattern Matching for switch [5] (21)
* Unnamed Variables & Patterns [6] (22)
We can start using the new APIs once the jfx 22 branch is split from
the master.
- Nir
[1] https://openjdk.org/jeps/454
[2]
https://download.java.net/java/early_access/jdk22/docs/api/java.base/java/lang/foreign/package-summary.html
[3] https://openjdk.org/jeps/413
[4] https://openjdk.org/jeps/440
[5] https://openjdk.org/jeps/441
[6] https://openjdk.org/jeps/456
