Rough Book

random musings of just another computer nerd

Running the JavaFX 1.1 SDK on Linux

This is an update to my instructions on running the JavaFX 1.0 SDK on Linux. Those instructions do not work on the dmg image for the 1.1 version of the SDK.

Mike (thanks Mike!) posted a comment on that blog mentioning a small change that needed to be made. To get JavaFX 1.1 on Linux, first follow the steps in the original guide. When you need to mount the dmg, you need to provide an offset. So instead of the original command, do the following:

vivin@dauntless ~
$; sudo mount -o loop,offset=$((1024*17)) -t hfsplus javafx_sdk-1_0-macosx-universal.dmg.out javafx

The dmg should be mounted now.

Popularity: 1% [?]

April 30, 2009 Posted by | Java, Linux, Programming and Development | , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

Running the JavaFX 1.0 SDK on Linux

The JavaFX 1.0 SDK was released today. I’ve played with the preview SDK, so I was pretty excited to try out the 1.0 SDK. Inexplicably, and this was the case with the preview SDK as well, Sun hasn’t released a version of the SDK for Linux. However, this wasn’t a problem because it was possible to run the Mac version of the Preview SDK on Linux. The preview SDK came in the form of a zip, but the 1.0 SDK comes in the form of a dmg, so I was initially stumped. But I’ve figured out how to get the Mac version of the SDK to work on Linux. It’s a little more complicated than getting the preview SDK to work, but it works!

The thing about dmg files is that you can easily mount them on Linux since they are essentially stored in the HFS Plus filesystem format. So I immediately set about trying to mount it:

vivin@dauntless ~
$ mkdir javafx

vivin@dauntless ~
$ sudo mount -o loop -t hfsplus javafx_sdk-1_0-macosx-universal.dmg javafx
[sudo] password for vivin:
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/loop0,
       missing codepage or helper program, or other error
       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail  or so

Hmm… ok, that wasn’t what I expected, so I tried to see what type of file it was:

vivin@dauntless ~
$; file javafx_sdk-1_0-macosx-universal.dmg
javafx_sdk-1_0-macosx-universal.dmg: bzip2 compressed data, block size = 100k

Ok, so it look’s like it’s a bzipped file. All we need to do then, is bunzip it and mount it:

vivin@dauntless ~
$ bunzip2 javafx_sdk-1_0-macosx-universal.dmg
bunzip2: Can't guess original name for javafx_sdk-1_0-macosx-universal.dmg -- using javafx_sdk-1_0-macosx-universal.dmg.out

bunzip2: javafx_sdk-1_0-macosx-universal.dmg: trailing garbage after EOF ignored

vivin@dauntless ~
$ sudo mount -o loop -t hfsplus javafx_sdk-1_0-macosx-universal.dmg.out javafx

vivin@dauntless ~
$ ls javafx
javafx_sdk-1_0.mpkg

Awesome! So we were able to get the dmg mounted. Now all we need to do is find were the SDK lives. After going through the dmg, I found out that the SDK is stored in a compressed (gzipped) file. You can find it at <mountpoint>/javafx_sdk-1_0.mpkg/Contents/Packages/javafxsdk.pkg/Contents/Archive.pax.gz. Copy this file into another working directory (or wherever you want your SDK to reside. I put mine in /usr/local):

vivin@dauntless ~/working
$ cp ~/javafx/javafx_sdk-1_0.mpkg/Contents/Packages/javafxsdk.pkg/Contents/Archive.pax.gz .

vivin@dauntless ~/working
$ gunzip Archive.pax.gz

vivin@dauntless ~/working
$ file Archive.pax
Archive.pax: ASCII cpio archive (pre-SVR4 or odc)

When I gunzipped the file, I got Archive.pax, and I wasn’t sure what to do with it. So I ran file on it and discovered that it was a cpio file. Some quick Googling and man-page perusal later:

vivin@dauntless ~/working
$ cpio -i <Archive.pax
65687 blocks

vivin@dauntless ~/working
$ ls
Archive.pax  COPYRIGHT.html  lib          profiles     samples     src.zip                      timestamp
bin          docs            LICENSE.txt  README.html  servicetag  THIRDPARTYLICENSEREADME.txt

vivin@dauntless ~/working
$ bin/javafx

Usage: java [-options] class [args...]
           (to execute a class)
   or  java [-options] -jar jarfile [args...]
           (to execute a jar file)

where options include:
    -d32          use a 32-bit data model if available

    -d64          use a 64-bit data model if available
    -client	  to select the "client" VM
    -server	  to select the "server" VM
    -hotspot	  is a synonym for the "client" VM  [deprecated]
                  The default VM is server,
                  because you are running on a server-class machine.

    -cp <class search path of directories and zip/jar files>
    -classpath <class search path of directories and zip/jar files>
                  A : separated list of directories, JAR archives,
                  and ZIP archives to search for class files.
    -D<name>=<value>
                  set a system property
    -verbose[:class|gc|jni]
                  enable verbose output
    -version      print product version and exit
    -version:<value>
                  require the specified version to run
    -showversion  print product version and continue
    -jre-restrict-search | -jre-no-restrict-search
                  include/exclude user private JREs in the version search
    -? -help      print this help message
    -X            print help on non-standard options
    -ea[:<packagename>...|:<classname>]
    -enableassertions[:<packagename>...|:<classname>]
                  enable assertions
    -da[:<packagename>...|:<classname>]
    -disableassertions[:<packagename>...|:<classname>]
                  disable assertions
    -esa | -enablesystemassertions
                  enable system assertions
    -dsa | -disablesystemassertions
                  disable system assertions
    -agentlib:<libname>[=<options>]
                  load native agent library <libname>, e.g. -agentlib:hprof
                    see also, -agentlib:jdwp=help and -agentlib:hprof=help
    -agentpath:<pathname>[=<options>]
                  load native agent library by full pathname
    -javaagent:<jarpath>[=<options>]
                  load Java programming language agent, see java.lang.instrument

As you can see, you now have a working JavaFX 1.0 SDK on your Linux box!

Popularity: 1% [?]

December 4, 2008 Posted by | Java, Linux, Programming and Development | , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

JavaFX: The New Hotness

I went to JavaOne a few months ago. It was a pretty neat experience and I learnt a lot of cool things. One of the things Sun was touting was the JavaFX family of technologies. It allows you to create RIA (Rich Internet Applications) using JavaFX Script, a domain-specific language built on top of Java. The demos were pretty impressive and it looks like Sun’s answer to Flash and Silverlight. I went to a few JavaFX sessions and I signed up for the preview SDK, which came out a few weeks ago. Since then, I’ve been playing around with the language to see what it can do. The language is pretty neat and being dynamic, has some pretty cool features like closures, list comprehension, lazy/incremental evaluation (through binding), and triggers. In addition, it uses a declarative model (although you can still use the traditional model) for describing a GUI. The API provides Swing components, but I believe the intent is to completely move away from that and use only JavaFX GUI components.

Calendar widget

Using a language that is only in preview is pretty interesting. The API is unfinished and the language isn’t completely mature, but this is to be expected. That being said, it still looks promising and seems to be a very capable and expressive language. Also, seeing as it is built on top of Java, you have access to all of Java’s rich API in addition to the numerous third-party Java libraries and API’s that are out there. I’ve been playing around with it for the last week or so and I was able to write a small calendar widget. It simply shows a month view for the current month, with the current date highlighted. I haven’t had much experience with writing GUIs in Java, so it took me a while to figure it all out. I shamelessly stole the colour gradient background from one of the demos in the preview SDK. The only issue I have right now is the load-time of the widget. It seems to take a while when you load it first. I don’t know if it has to do with the way I coded it or not. I’m pretty sure I’m not doing it the best way, but I expect to get better once I get more familiar with the language.

Here’s a screenshot of the widget running on Firefox 3 on my Ubuntu laptop (the theme is a Leopard theme):

Calendar widget

I have more details on the project page.

Popularity: 1% [?]

August 24, 2008 Posted by | Java, Programming and Development | , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

   

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