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Back in the past I wrote a couple of Java apps. These were written using the Java Swing framework, and have worked nicely on both Windows and Linux X11 desktops for a long time.
Back in the past I wrote a couple of Java apps. These were written using the Java Swing framework, and have worked nicely on both Windows and Linux X11 desktops for a long time.
It turns out Java GUI technology has been somewhat abandoned by Oracle, in particular when running Swing (or JavaFX) applications on Wayland, Java relies on the XWayland adpater to bodge X11 API calls back to Wayland proper. This is not great (read: doesn't work out of the box), so I wondered if someone had implemented a native Wayland backend for Swing - and they have, multiple times - super, but wait.. Oracle have not merged either project into mainline Openjdk, and indeed the only way to make either of them work is by hideous bodging, which also puts paid to any thoughts of writing my own backend, as the hacks required to load it at run time (read: in every application) are not sustainable. Grrr! So what to do?
I can of course switch back to an X11 desktop (ie: Budgie), but this irritates me, plus I have already ported OpenSceneGraph + Flightgear to Wayland, it wasn't that difficult :)
As soon as I have enough of the protocol implemented to connect and display something, then testing ensues - gotta see something on screen :) The test program will now evolve along with the protocol components as I add features. Oh, and it works nicely - this is 11 days in!
Given I will be using most of the Wayland protocol to achieve anything (it's minimal) and Wayland is well specified then the 'start at the bottom and build up' design pattern fits. Wayland has a wire protocol based on a Unix socket, and usefully Java has supported Unix sockets since release 16, so I can write everything in Java to (de)serialise messages. This gets me going quickly, providing positive feedback that I'm on the right track..