> I would estimate that the work involved, depending on how many and who would > do it, would take at least 6 months
I think this would take years, not months--it's almost like building a whole new IDE. Meanwhile, the codebase would become cluttered with a mix of Swing and JavaFX APIs, and the UI would no longer have a L&F that's consistent with the user's operating system. Or worse--there would be a mix of L&Fs within the GUI, if Swing and JavaFX components are mixed. Both Swing and JavaFX are niche technologies, and I'd question the value of porting a large existing application from one to another. On the other hand, someone could create a fresh new JavaFX-based IDE as a NetBeans Platform application that reuses only backend-related NetBeans Platform & IDE modules. That would avoid affecting the existing codebase, and it could be made purely JavaFX from the start. Though personally, I'd much prefer to see efforts focused on improving the existing, mature NetBeans UI. -- Eirik From: Geertjan Wielenga <geertjan.wiele...@googlemail.com.INVALID> Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2018 8:19 AM To: us...@netbeans.incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: JavaFX for NetBeans GUI Aside from the licensing concerns, I think we need to set some expectations here. I.e., rewriting the NetBeans user interface from Swing to JavaFX is a LOT of work. And it has to be done really well and be really performant and require a group of very highly skilled JavaFX developers. I would estimate that the work involved, depending on how many and who would do it, would take at least 6 months, though that's a rough estimate. It's probably one of the most complex tasks that I can think of in relation to Apache NetBeans. So, it would be great for this to be done, but let's not be naive about the amount of work, skills, and energy required. Gj On Thu, Aug 16, 2018 at 2:15 PM, Neil C Smith <neilcsm...@apache.org<mailto:neilcsm...@apache.org>> wrote: On Thu, 16 Aug 2018, 12:51 Josh Juneau, <juneau...@gmail.com<mailto:juneau...@gmail.com>> wrote: It would be nice to have a JavaFX GUI for NetBeans, specifically if something like Gluon Mobile were used For that to happen *here* would require a shift in Apache policies towards GPL w/CPE licensed dependencies as far as I know. Of course, ongoing modularization of the JDK and changes in deployment strategies might provoke a change. Best wishes, Neil
