Modules5 articles

Java modules have been a big discussion point before in many places. And this is now also causing some headaches in the Pi4J project…

Hello and welcome to Part 4 of a series of blog entries on how I created a “sci-fi” looking world clock using JavaFX. If you are new to this series you can visit Part 1, 2, & 3.

If you’ve been following me to this point take a moment to stand up, breath, take a bow and then pat yourself on the back. You are more than half way through the series.

In Part 4 I will be fast forwarding my progress of the JFX World Clock and jump right into how to build and create an installer that you can distribute. I will be using a new Java build tool called Bach by Christian Stein @sormuras. Later on, I will also show you my original build approach using the Maven build tool.

Do you ever get bored of the plain old UI Forms? Often, UI forms will have nice visual cues and validation icons as feedback when the user has typed something incorrectly.

In Part 3, I’ll be discussing the UI form section of the JavaFX World Clock that allows the user to add and modify timezone locations. While building Java apps using the new module system can be a bit of a challenge, here I will show you how I was able to successfully build a modern MVC based JavaFX UI!

Since August 2018, I have been compiling an overview of Java modules uploaded to Maven Central.

This overview is generated by the Scanner program and it is based on the results of the modulescanner that is run on Sonatypes hardware on every uploaded JAR file and stored in an AWS S3 bucket, setup together with the AdoptOpenJDK team at their #java9plusadoption Slack channel.

Some of those uploaded JAR files are Java modules. They are the interesting subjects of this overview as they contain a module-info.class, a compiled module descriptor with a stable name and an explicit API their author(s) comitted to.