> 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

Reply via email to