javafxmobile-plugin

The javafxmobile-plugin is a gradle plugin that unifies the building of Java and JavaFX applications for different target platforms:

• desktop
• android
• ios

Before you start

javafxmobile-plugin version 1.x brought Java 8 to mobile development. Version 2.x is an upgrade of the plugin that enables Java 9 development by leveraging Gluon VM. Gluon VM is Gluon's custom developed Java virtual machine that specifically targets mobile devices.

Note! Gluon VM is still in active development and is at the moment only supported on iOS devices. If you want to develop an application for production, please use the stable 1.x version. If you want to experiment with Java 9 features, please use the new 2.x version.

Getting started

IDE plugin

The easiest way to get started is by using the Gluon IDE plugin for your IDE:

• NetBeans
• IntelliJ IDEA
• Eclipse

Once the IDE plugin is installed, you can create a new Gluon Mobile project.

Sample

A complete basic sample is also available from the Gluon samples repository:

https://github.com/gluonhq/gluon-samples/tree/master/singleview-gluonvm

Prerequisites

General

1. JDK 9
2. Gradle 4.2+

iOS

1. A Mac with MacOS X 10.13.2 or superior

2. Xcode 9.2 or superior, available from the Mac App Store

3. To deploy on an iOS device, the usbmuxd library, a cross-platform software library that talks the protocols to support iOS devices. Install it with the use of Homebrew:

   brew install usbmuxd
   

4. It is highly recommended to increase the Java stack size, by adding the following option to the ~/.gradle/gradle.properties file:

   org.gradle.jvmargs=-Xms256m -Xmx4096m -Xss2m
   

Be aware that the first time the plugin runs an iOS task, it will take a long time (more than 15 minutes) to ahead-of-time compile all the Java modules. After this finishes successfully, all these modules are cached locally (~/.gvm/aot), so the next runs will be shorter (just a few minutes).

Android

Note! Be aware that Java 9 APIs on Android are not supported. If you use version 2 of javafxmobile-plugin, you must make sure that you don't use any new Java 9 APIs.

1. The Android SDK command line tools, available here

2. Use the sdkmanager command line tool to install the following packages:

   ANDROID_SDK/tools/bin/sdkmanager "platform-tools" "build-tools;27.0.3" "platforms;android-25" "extras;android;m2repository" "extras;google;m2repository"
   

Note! You must run the sdkmanager using Java 8. Before running this command, set your JAVA_HOME variable to a Java 8 installation, e.g.

export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_162.jdk/Contents/Home/

Make sure to switch back to Java 9 for your mobile development.

3. Define a global gradle property named ANDROID_HOME inside ~/.gradle/gradle.properties that points to the location of the Android SDK:

   ANDROID_HOME=/path/to/android-sdk-directory
   

4. Make sure to set the source and target compatibility in build.gradle to Java 8 to make your applications deployable on Android.

   sourceCompatibility = 1.8
   targetCompatibility = 1.8
   

Usage

If you create your project without the use of the IDE plugins, add the following to your build.gradle:

buildscript {
    repositories {
        jcenter()
        google()
        maven {
            url 'http://nexus.gluonhq.com/nexus/content/repositories/releases'
        }
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath 'org.javafxports:jfxmobile-plugin:2.0.8'
    }
}

apply plugin: 'org.javafxports.jfxmobile'

repositories {
    jcenter()
}

License

This project is licensed under the 3-Clause BSD license.