This week brings a native Linux desktop port, an Apple Watch and Wear OS port, a visual Game Builder with a high-level gaming API, and a new crash-protection system, with a tutorial following each one over the coming days. There is also a large piece of work that you mostly should not have noticed: we rebuilt the build cloud, and that rebuild caused a few failed builds along the way. More on that below.
What is Codename One? Codename One is an open-source framework for building native iOS, Android, desktop, and web apps from a single Java or Kotlin codebase. Learn more at codenameone.com.
A native Linux desktop port
PR #5239 adds a native Linux port, the structural twin of the native Windows port we shipped last week. The same ParparVM pipeline that turns your Java/Kotlin bytecode into C, here targeting Linux through GTK3, Cairo, Pango and GdkPixbuf for rendering, OpenGL ES for 3D, GStreamer for media and camera, and WebKitGTK for the browser component. There is no JVM on the target machine: it is a single self-contained ELF you launch like any other program.
We expected this to be painful, and parts of it were, but Linux turned out to be mostly developer friendly. A non-trivial app fits in 5MB, and on my Linux machine it started faster than most of the GNOME native apps already installed; thanks to the default material design theme it tends to look better too:
