warp VS teavm

jpackage is not the only tool for bundling Java. There is also warp-packer, an open-source tool to create self-contained binary applications from Node.js, .NET Core, and Java. warp-packer requires a similar workflow to Method 2, where you create your modified Java Runtime image and an executable script before bundling everything together into an executable.

https://github.com/dgiagio/warp just googled it, no direct experience

KeenWrite is my free, open-source, cross-platform desktop Markdown text editor developed using JavaFX. The installer script uses warp-packer to create installation-free self-extracting binaries for Windows and Linux.

My desktop text editor[1] is written using JavaFX and leans on Warp Packer[2] to create installer-free, multi-platform executable binaries (without jlink). A user contributed a new dark theme[3], which blends nicely with the desktop.

The JavaFX-based WebView (an HTML rendering component) is lauded, but has no direct API to control the scroll position and is itself a memory hog. Scrolling must be handled through JavaScript, and that indirection is as unwieldy as you can probably imagine. FlyingSaucer is a workable alternative to WebView, but comes with numerous technical issues that rear themselves when embedding a Swing widget inside a JavaFX application---as I discovered during development.

Were I to start from scratch, I would definitely seek out alternative cross-platform programming languages for desktop application development.

[1]: https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite

[2]: https://github.com/dgiagio/warp

[3]: https://i.ibb.co/QpqS0NS/screenshot.png

"Java -- possible, but you'll need a startup script to just call java -jar some-tool.jar; (also not a good fit for short-lived tools, mainly due to startup times;)"

Two technologies to look at:

* Warp Packer -- https://github.com/dgiagio/warp/

* Liberica Native Image Kit -- https://bell-sw.com/pages/liberica-native-image-kit/

Warp Packer bundles my JavaFX desktop application, KeenWrite into single binary executable files:

* https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite/releases/download/2.... (Linux)

* https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite/releases/download/2.... (Windows)

* https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite/releases/download/2....

The start-up time for the first launch of the .bin or .exe is slow because it unpacks to a user directory. Subsequent starts are fine enough, even when running from the command-line as a short-lived task. Here's the script that creates the self-contained executable files:

https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite/blob/master/installe...

To create a release for all three files, I run a single shell script from a build machine:

https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite/blob/master/release....

I could probably generate a binary for MacOS, but not enough people have asked.

Joel from our team worked on the initial prototype for WASI support in TeaVM (https://github.com/konsoletyper/teavm/pull/610), and we temporarily forked before the WASI support made it to the official repo.

Good reminder to deprecate that now!

A number of concerns with the viability of the current WASM GC are covered here (Google translation to English):

https://habr-com.translate.goog/ru/articles/757182/?_x_tr_sl...

and the original article:

https://habr.com/ru/articles/757182/

This is from the author of TeaVM, who has 10 years of experience getting Java and JVM code to run efficiently in the browser. https://teavm.org/

TeaVM's existing transpilation of Java to JavaScript performs well (using the browsers JS GC). It will be interesting to see if WASM GC matures to the point where it is even faster.

Uses this apparently: https://github.com/konsoletyper/teavm

How does this compare to say the TeaVM (https://github.com/konsoletyper/teavm) which I know only has "experimental" WASM support at the moment?

For Java, no WASM file is requested. Maybe the Java code was transpiled to JavaScript, perhaps using TeaVM.

>> It's not like you can take a random JAR and convert it to WASM.

Maybe you can:

TeaVM is an ahead-of-time compiler for Java bytecode that emits JavaScript and WebAssembly that runs in a browser. Its close relative is the well-known GWT. The main difference is that TeaVM does not require source code, only compiled class files. Moreover, the source code is not required to be Java, so TeaVM successfully compiles Kotlin and Scala.

https://teavm.org/

I have never had an opportunity to try out TeaVM, but it seems promising.

For a fast, lightweight, Java-based front-end, try TeaVM and its Flavour toolkit:

https://teavm.org/

It is easy to get started by using the maven archtetype, there's an tutorial in Java Magazine here:

https://blogs.oracle.com/javamagazine/post/java-in-the-brows...

With TeamVM and Flavour you get a full front-end SPA framework that lets you code business logic in Java, and pair that with HTML and CSS to make components.

To see what it can do, check out Wordii, a fast-paced 5-letter word game:

> Someone will make the JRE run on WASM

https://teavm.org/

Minecraft contains some native dependencies, though; you'll need something like https://copy.sh/v86/ or https://bellard.org/jslinux/ with the right operating system image to run it in browser.