Processing 4.0

Processing 4 makes important updates to the code to prepare the platform for its future. Most significantly, this includes the move to JDK 11 and support for new Java language features. The changes should be transparent to most users, but because of the massive shift behind the scenes, this will be 4.0.

Roadmap

We don't have a schedule for a final release. This work is being done by a tiny number of volunteers working in their personal free time.

• We're currently using JDK 11, which is a “Long Term Support” (LTS) release. Java 17 is the next LTS, and we'll switch to that when it arrives in September 2021.

API Changes

As with all releases, we'll do everything possible to avoid breaking API. However, there will still be tweaks that have to be made. We'll try to keep them minor. Our goal is stability, and keeping everyone's code running.

alpha 2

• See changes.md if you're using surface.setResizable() with this release on macOS and with P2D or P3D renderers.
• The static versions of selectInput(), selectOutput(), and selectFolder() in PApplet have been removed. These were not documented, hopefully were not in use anywhere.
• The frame object has been removed from PApplet. We've been warning folks to use surface since 2015, but we still should warn users
• PImage.checkAlpha() is now public instead of protected
• All AWT calls have been moved out of PImage, which may be a problem for anything that was relying on those internals
  • For instance, new PImage(java.awt.Image) is no longer available. It was an undocumented method that was public only because it was required by subclasses.
• Removed MouseEvent.getClickCount() and MouseEvent.getAmount(). These had been deprecated, not clear they were used anywhere.

alpha 1

• Base.defaultFileMenu is now protected instead of static public

Other Changes

alpha 2

• The minimum system version for macOS (for the PDE and exported applications) is now set to 10.13.6 (the last update of High Sierra). Apple will likely be dropping support for High Sierra in late 2020, so we may make the minimum 10.14.x by the time 4.x ships.

alpha 1

• Processing 4 will be 64-bit only. This is the overwhelming majority of users, and we don't have the necessary help to maintain and support 32-bit systems.

Translation Updates

• export.embed_java.for changed to export.include_java which also embeds a string for the platform for better localization support.

Building the Code

We'll eventually create a new wiki page with the build instructions, but for the time being, the instructions are:

1. Download and install JDK 11 from https://adoptopenjdk.net/

2. Make sure ant is installed for your platform.

3. Open a Terminal window/Command Prompt/whatever and type:

    cd /path/to/processing4/build
    ant run
   

Java version complaints

You might have multiple versions of Java installed. Type java -version and if it says something other than 11, you'll need to set the JAVA_HOME environment variable.

On macOS, you can use:

export JAVA_HOME="`/usr/libexec/java_home -v 11`"

If you need to go back to Java 8 (i.e. to build Processing 3), you can use:

export JAVA_HOME="`/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.8`"

On Windows and Linux, you can set JAVA_HOME to point at the installation the way you would any other environment variable.

And again, we'll have more complete instructions later once the dust settles.

Eclipse

If you're using Eclipse, it'll complain about the lack of jogl-all-src.jar. Steps to create your own:

    git clone --recurse-submodules git://jogamp.org/srv/scm/jogl.git jogl
    cd jogl
    git checkout 0779f229b0e9538c640b18b9a4e095af1f5a35b3
    zip -r ../jogl-all-src.jar src

Then copy that jogl-all-src.jar file to sit next to the jogl-all.jar folder inside /path/to/processing/core/library.