Java-GI 0.13.1 is a bugfix release.

Fixes

• A bug that crashed the java-gi command-line tool has been fixed (#309, thanks to @Daru-san for reporting), and the tool has been updated so that the generated module-info.java and build.gradle files work with the new domain name and module structure introduced in Java-GI 0.13.0.
• The org.javagi.util.Intl class, introduced with Java-GI 0.13.0, was not usable with the GNOME Flatpak runtime because it couldn't find libgettextlib.so. This has also been fixed.

Availability and dependencies:

• The new release is available on Maven Central.
• Java-GI requires OpenJDK 22 or later.
• The bindings are based on the GNOME 48 libraries. These need to be installed.

Full Changelog: 0.13.0...0.13.1

Java-GI 0.13.0 is a major new feature and bugfix release. There were no changes since 0.13.0-RC1.

All changes, fixes and other improvements in this release are listed in the release notes of Java-GI 0.13.0-RC1.

Availability and dependencies:

• The new release is available on Maven Central.
• Java-GI requires OpenJDK 22 or later.
• The bindings are based on the GNOME 48 libraries. These need to be installed.

Full Changelog: 0.12.2...0.13.0

Java-GI 0.13.0-RC1 contains a number of enhancements and bugfixes. It is the first release candidate for the upcoming 0.13.0 release.

Highlights

New domain name

One of the most visible changes in this release is the new java-gi.org domain name (#238). The Maven artifact coordinates have a new group-id, and all Java-GI packages and modules have a new name. This will break the code for all existing users, but should be easy to fix:

• Change the Maven group-id from io.github.jwharm.javagi to org.java-gi (mind the dash) in your dependency declarations;
• Change all import statements starting of io.github.jwharm.javagi to org.javagi.

Reorganized modules & packages

#270: Many packages have been combined in modules:

• GLib, GObject, GIO and GModule are now bundled in one module org.gnome.glib
• Gsk, Gdk, Graphene and Gtk are bundled in org.gnome.gtk
• All GStreamer modules are in org.freedesktop.gstreamer
• All WebKit modules are in org.webkitgtk
• All regression test modules are in org.gnome.gobjectintrospectiontests

#259: The package names of WebKitGTK bindings have been changed from org.gnome.webkit to org.webkitgtk. Users of the Java-GI WebkitGTK bindings will have to update the package names as described in #259.

Last but not least, there are new bindings for LibRsvg, GstApp and LibSecret.

GNOME version

The bindings of Java-GI 0.13.0-RC1 are based on GNOME 48 (the same as the previous release 0.12.2).
An update to GNOME 49 will follow in a future release.

Improvements

• Java-GI will now read the input value of an Out<> parameter in Java, and set it as the initial value of the out-parameter of a native function.
  • This should be completely null-safe and automatically unbox primitive values, but still, if you encounter any issues with this, please log a GitHub issue.
• Java-GI now builds "library" and "test" modules. The "library" modules are published to Maven Central, while the "test" modules generate and compile Java bindings for the GObject-Introspection regression tests (GIMarshallingtests, Regress), and run JUnit testcases for these bindings.
• #234, #254, #257: A metadata parser was added to Java-GI, to make it easier to "patch" the GIR data. The metadata format is inspired by the Gir metadata format used by Vala.
• #237: GObject.notify_(), Icon.toString_() and SocketConnectable.toString_() have been renamed.
• #238: The package and module names have been renamed from io.github.javagi to org.javagi and the Maven group-id to org.java-gi.
• #253: Specified the actual ListModel element type, instead of the generic <T extends GObject>, of several classes that implement ListModel.
• #256: GString has been replaced in Java by java.lang.String: java-gi will automatically marshal Java Strings from and to native GStrings when applicable. The class org.gnome.glib.GString is no longer generated.
• #259: The package names of Webkit, JavaScriptCore and Webkit-Webprocessextension were wrong for multiple reasons, so they have been changed.
• #260, #261: Java-GI now registers boxed, enum and flags types in the internal TypeCache, enabling automatically conversion of GValues with boxed, enum and flags values from and to Java objects. #260 also added conversion of GValues with GStrv from and to Java String[] values.
• #264: It is now possible to pack and unpack GVariants from and to Java objects with the new pack(), unpack() and unpackRecursive() methods of the org.gnome.glib.Variant class.
• #267: The runtime platform checks have been removed. The checks didn't add much value, but complicated the code generator. Calling a function that is unavailable on your runtime platform will now throw NullPointerException (instead of the old UnsupportedPlatformException).
• #271: Added GstApp-1.0 to the gstreamer module.
• #275: Added bindings for LibRsvg
• #281: Added a utility class to use GNU Gettext-based translations from Java
• #285: Added bindings for LibSecret

Fixes

NB. Several fixes don't have a linked issue; most of these were found while working on the regression tests.

• #222 & #224: Run cleanable immediately when calling yieldOwnership (thanks to @BwackNinja)
• #225: Fixed a race condition during cleanup of short-lived callback functions
• #223 & #227: Use a single upcall stub for all ToggleRefFinalizers to fix an out-of-memory error (thanks to @BwackNinja)
• Fix handling of a void* alias that is used in an out-parameter
• Fix handling of virtual methods with different parameter names than its invoker method
• For variadic callback functions, Java-GI used to generate incorrect code that didn't compile. The compile error has been fixed (but this type of callback function is not supported.)
• Treat alias of va_list as an opaque pointer
• Recognize a GDestroyNotify* out-parameter
• Added a couple temporary patches for missing out-parameter annotations in GstVideo gir data, to be submitted upstream
• Handle GObject properties of type uchar
• Fix the writeXXX() method that is generated for GObject properties with a pointer to a primitive value (the method will now expect a MemorySegment value in Java)
• Renamed Impl classes that Java-GI uses internally for interfaces and abstract classes (such as File.FileImpl) to $Impl to prevent name clashes with types that actually have a name ending with "Impl"
• Added support for marshaling zero-terminated float[] arrays
• Fix conversion of parameter names that start with an underscore
• #239: Fixed handling of constant declarations with suffixes
• Apply the "deprecated" annotation on all types where it is set in the Gir file, not only on methods
• Changed the return type of GObject.connect() to a generic SignalConnection
• #243: Fixed issues with array out-parameters
• #244: Various small fixes
• #245: Added missing Deprecated annotations on deprecated constant fields and enum members
• #246: Fixed an issue with displaying images in Javadoc for GskPath
• Many small fixes for array marshalling and proper memory allocation of arrays
• #250 Implemented a malloc-based SegmentAllocator for memory that is freed by native code, but allocated in Java.
• #251 Added support for struct/union parameters and return values that are passed by value, not by reference.
• #255 Improved handling of boxed types
• #268 Fixed ownership bugs of GError parameters
• #277: Fixed reading and writing to and from fixed-size array (SequenceLayout) fields in a struct
• #290: Added a runtime warning for a missing MemorySegment-constructor
• #296: Fixed signal argument handling for structs that are passed by value

Miscellanious

• Updated the dependency of cairo-java-bindings to 1.18.4.2
• Updated JUnit-Jupiter, com.vanniktech.maven.publish and GitHub actions dependencies
• #258: GIR files are now loaded by version and filename. Previously, java-gi only used the name (for example, "Gtk") to find a gir file. Now it uses the name and version (like "Gtk-4.0") to prevent conflicts when multiple versions of the same library have a gir file available in the same directory.
• #286: The address field of the ProxyInstance class has been marked as deprecated. This field was set to public visibility in Java-GI 0.12, but that will be changed back to private in a future release. The deprecation will provide some time to update impacted code.
• #287: Improved documentation about icon usage in templates (thanks to @Nyeksenn)

Availability and dependencies:

• The new release is available on Maven Central.
• Java-GI requires OpenJDK 22 or later.
• The bindings are based on the GNOME 48 libraries. These need to be installed.

Full Changelog: 0.12.2...0.13.0-RC1

Java-GI 0.12.2 is a bugfix release.

Fixes

• #216 & #219: Rework library loading with a focus on cross-platform support (thanks to @JFronny for the PR)
• #221 LibAdwaita 1.7 API not available: wrong versions of gir files were used to generate bindings

Availability and dependencies:

• The new release is available on Maven Central.
• Java-GI requires OpenJDK 22 or later.
• The bindings are based on the GNOME 48 libraries. These need to be installed.

Full Changelog: 0.12.1...0.12.2

Java-GI 0.12.1 is a bugfix release. There were no changes since 0.12.1-RC1.

Availability and dependencies:

• The new release is available on Maven Central.
• Java-GI requires OpenJDK 22 or later.
• The bindings are based on the GNOME 48 libraries. These need to be installed.

Full Changelog: 0.12.0...0.12.1

Java-GI 0.12.1-RC1 is the first release candidate of the upcoming 0.12.1 release.

What's Changed

Fixes

• #212 Subclassing opaque classes in Java works again, fixing a regression in release 0.12.0. Please be aware that these subclasses only exist in Java: it is not possible to register a GType for them.
• #215 The new constructor(Object... propertyNamesAndValues) that is generated in all GObject-derived classes since Java-GI 0.12.0 has been changed to a no-argument constructor. See issue #213 for more information. It is still possible to construct GObjects with varargs property names and values: Use GObject.newInstance(Class, Object... propertyNamesAndValues) instead.

Contributors

Thanks to @JFronny, @MMarco94 and @esiqveland for reporting issues.

Full Changelog: 0.12.0...0.12.1-RC1

Java-GI 0.12.0 is a major new feature and bugfix release.

What's Changed

Upgrades

The published bindings have been upgraded to GNOME Platform 48. Read all about GNOME 48 on the What's new for developers page on the GNOME website!

Improvements

• #194: GListStore now supports mutation methods of the Java List interface:

  ListStore store = ...;
  store.removeAt(2); // direct binding to `g_list_store_remove(int)`, already worked
  store.remove(2);   // List.remove(int) used to throw UnsupportedOperationException, but now works too

• #195: GObject construction has been significantly improved:
  • All GObject-derived classes can now be constructed with ClassName(Object... properties). The properties argument is variadic, so it can be left out, or used to set pairs of property names and values:

    var button = new Button("label", "_Click me", "use-underline", true);

  • When creating your own GObject-derived Java class, you can override this constructor and call super(...) to construct the native instance:

    public class MyApplication extends Application {
        public MyApplication() {
            super("application-id", "org.example.App");
        }
        
        public void activate() {
            // ...
        }
    }

  • As shown in the above example, the MemorySegment constructor does not need to be explicitly overridden anymore. This constructor is used by Java-GI to create a Java proxy instance for native objects returned from native code, but when your own Java classes will not be returned like that, it can be safely omitted.
  • The super() call above to the new ClassName(Object... properties) constructor, creates a Java proxy instance and then calls g_object_new(). As a result, a GObject initialization method can be run on the Java instance. This used to only be possible with a static factory method to create the new instance:

    public class Foo extends GObject {
        public Foo() {
            super();
        }
    
        @InstanceInit        
        public void initialize() {
            // GObject initializer function.
            // This is automatically called by `g_object_new()`, during the `super()` call above.
        }
    }

  • Registration of Java classes in the GType system has been automated whenever possible. When a GType isn't available for a Java class, it will be registered on-the-fly. The mandatory call to Types.register() (or TemplateTypes.register() for Gtk template classes) has now become optional in almost all cases.
• #199: All occurences of GBytes are now available as byte[] values in Java. Java-GI allocates and destroyes GBytes behind the scenes automatically.
• #206: Added the new <doc:format> Gir element to the Gir parser (but not using it for anything yet).
• #209: All Gir version attributes are now translated to Javadoc @since tags. Please be aware that this is the native library version, not the Java-GI version.

Fixes

• #183: Do not free GList or GSList instances when ownership is "none".
• #184: Generate static factory methods instead of constructors in abstract classes, fixing an issue with GstGLContext. This also changes the existing constructors in GtkMediaFile and SoupAuth to factory methods. This should not impact existing users, because the old constructors were unusable.
• #196: Do not generate a builder() method in abstract classes. These classes are not supposed to be constructed directly.
• #197: Fix double ref() in static factory methods.
• Automatically sink initially floating references to newly constructed GClosure, GVariant and GParamSpec.
• #198: Cache callback parameters, to preserve state of custom Java classes from native code (by GtkBuilder, for example).
• Fix support for properties with GObject-derived object types.
• When a @Property-annotated method has no obvious property name, do not throw an IllegalArgumentException, but use the method name itself as a fallback.
• #201: Refactored the code generation dealing with return values and out-parameters. As a result, return values are now always stored in a local variable before they are returned. This provides room for "post-processing statements" that were already generated for out-parameters, and now for return values as well. It also fixes a memory leak that occured in some functions with out-parameters.
• Handle callbacks with variadic arguments (not really supported yet, but the code generator at least doesn't crash anymore)
• A couple GHashTable-related fixes: handle GObject properties where the value is a GHashTable, handle GHashTable where the key or value is an enumeration or flag type.
• #204: Fixed a crash related to callback functions with "notified" and "async" scope (for example GLib.idleAdd) when called from a different thread than the application main loop.
• #205: Reimplemented GLib.idleAddOnce, timeoutAddOnce and timeoutAddSecondsOnce in Java to avoid memory leaks.

Miscellanious

• #182: Added a section in the docs about using SVG icons in Gtk.
• #188, #189: The GitHub CI action to build Windows native Gtk DLLs and executables has been extended with LibAdwaita.
• The 'javagi' command-line tool (to generate bindings from a Gir file) has a new --stacktrace option to print the stacktrace for all exceptions.
• Fixed build issues in the Flatpak manifest of the HelloTemplate example project.

Contributors

Thanks to @BwackNinja, @leinardi, @Ombrelin, @JFronny, @esiqveland and @mrlem for their contributions and issue reports!

Full Changelog: 0.11.2...0.12.0

Java-GI 0.11.2 is a minor feature and bugfix release.

What's Changed

API changes

• The deprecated class io.github.jwharm.javagi.gtk.types.Types has been removed. This class was renamed from Types to TemplateTypes in an earlier version of Java-GI.
• The generic type parameters on the method signature of Types.register() have been removed. Kotlin users might have to fix a compile error when using Types.register<MyClass, ParentClass>(MyClass::class.java); to fix it, remove the generic arguments.

Improvements

• #163: Added support for registering Java interfaces and enums in the GObject type system:

  • You can now create an interface in Java (complete with signals and property definitions), and register it in the GObject type system just like it was already possible for classes, with one simple call: Types.register(MyInterface.class). You can optionally specify prerequisites in the @RegisteredType annotation.
  • For custom enums, few practical use cases exist. But in case anyone needs them anyway, they will be happy to discover that the Types.register() API recognizes Java enums and will register a GObject enum or flags type (when annotated as @Flags).

• #164: Added an internal mapping of Java classes to GTypes. As a result, the declaration of a public static Type getType() method has now become redundant, and it is now possible to construct new instances using GObject.newInstance(Foo.class). This means the GType has (for most use cases) been moved "behind the scenes" and Java developers can simply work with the class itself!

  An example of the new, shorter way to register a class and construct new instances:

  public class Foo extends GObject {
      static {
          Types.register(Foo.class);
      }
  
      public static Foo newInstance() {
          return GObject.newInstance(Foo.class);
      }
  
      public Foo(MemorySegment address) {
          super(address);
      }
  }

• #165: Getter and setter method pairs in Java will automatically be recognized as GObject properties when the class is registered as a GType. If your class follows the usual get/set naming convention, the @Property annotation can be omitted. (@Property can still be used to set flags and override the property name.)

  // Will result in a "max-speed" property of type "int"
  public int getMaxSpeed() {
      ...
  }
  
  public void setMaxSpeed(int maxSpeed) {
      ...
  }

  For boolean properties, you can also use isFoo()/setFoo() pairs.
  Kotlin creates get- and set-methods for Kotlin properties automatically, so in practice a Kotlin property will be registered as a GObject property.

• #168: Extended the @Property annotation to allow setting a minimum, maximum and default value for GObject properties in a GObject-derived Java class, that will be set in the GParamSpec:

  @Property(minimumValue = "1", maximumValue = "12", defaultValue = "1")
  public void setMonth(int month) {
      this.month = month;
  }

• #170: Added toString() methods for GType and GVariant, to ease printing and debugging.

• #171: Added support for mutable ListModels, and allows patches to pick implementation classes for generics where appropriate (like StringList now implements ListModel<StringObject> as its documentation suggests). Thanks to @JFronny for the PR.

• #178: Created a unified way to add toString() methods to generated classes using the existing patch-mechanism, to replace the custom code for GType, GVariant, GValue, StringFilter and others. Thanks again to @JFronny for implementing most of this.

Fixes

• #160: Removed the automatic override of the return type of named constructor functions. (It is now only overridden for Gtk Widgets.) This fixes an issue in bindings generated for ICal-GLib.
• #162: Changed the generateSources Gradle task to make it compatible with the Gradle configuration cache, and enabled the configuration cache.
• #169: Generate methods for <union> GIR types. As a result, a couple missing GMutex methods are now available. (Thanks to @leinardi for reporting)
• #172: Allow extending GstMapFlags with additional flags, such as GstGL.MAP_GL. (Thanks to @BwackNinja for reporting)
• #173: Generate missing accessors for fields containing a GList or GSList, for example in Pango.LayoutLine. (Thanks to @BwackNinja for reporting)
• Fixed the build script of the GstPbutils module so it generates bindings from the correct gir file.
• #175: Compare parameter types of virtual methods and their invoker methods, and only combine them in one Java method when the parameter types match exactly. This fixes a compile error in bindings generated for GstGL (thanks again to @BwackNinja for reporting)

Miscellanious

• Two Scala example applications (a "Hello world" app and a simple image viewer) were added to the java-gi-examples collection, and the Calculator example was ported from Java to Kotlin. (Thanks to @poach3r for the contribution)

Full Changelog: 0.11.1...0.11.2

Java-GI 0.11.1 is a minor feature and bugfix release.

What's Changed

Improvements:

#150: Java-GI can now be used as a command-line tool to generate Java bindings manually from a GObject-Introspection repository (gir) file. Download the zip file below, extract it, and run java-gi <filename.gir> to generate bindings. More info is available on the Java-GI website, or run java-gi --help.

Fixes:

#151: Added missing support for the gir <doc-stability> element.
#153: Fixed the MemoryCleaner functionality to automatically free struct/union types.
#154: Added support for array aliases (thanks to @leinardi for reporting)
#155: Fixed an issue where internal GdkModifierKey flags caused Java-GI to throw an exception (thanks to @poach3r for reporting)
#156: Various fixes to generate Java bindings for Libical (thanks to @tintou for reporting)
#159: Fixed an issue in the new command-line tool (thanks to @poach3r for reporting)
#161: Fixed an issue with passing signal arguments to Java methods from GtkBuilder ui files (thanks to @Nyeksenn for reporting)

Availability and dependencies:

• The new release is available on Maven Central.
• Java-GI requires OpenJDK 22 or later.
• The bindings are based on the GNOME 47 libraries. These need to be installed.

Full Changelog: 0.11.0...0.11.1

Java-GI 0.11.0 features a lot of improvements and bugfixes all over the board.

What's Changed

Improvements:

• Java-GI 0.11.0 upgrades the Java bindings to the GNOME 47 platform versions. Read the What's new for developers section of the GNOME 47 Release Notes for an overview of the changes in this GNOME release.
• The GListModel interface has been made generic in Java: ListModel<T extends GObject>. The entire hierarchy of classes and interfaces that implement GListModel is now generic as well.
• Furthermore, the ListModel interface now extends java.util.List, so all list models can now be used as a Java collection (enhanced for loop, process with stream(), ...).
• #123: An additional no-argument constructor has been added to classes that have ambiguity between the default MemorySegment-constructor and another constructor with one (optional) parameter, when passing null. To pass null, users had to cast it. The new constructors resolve this. (Thanks to David Goodenough for reporting this.) Example:

// Old
var frame = new Frame((String) null);

// New
var frame = new Frame();

• #126: It is now possible to connect signals from Builder objects. For example:

var button = Button.builder()
        .setLabel("Close")
        .onClicked(window::close)
        .build;

• The Gtk functions StyleContext.addProviderForDisplay and removeProviderForDisplay have been copied to Gtk.styleContextAddProviderForDisplay and Gtk.styleContextRemoveProviderForDisplay because the StyleContext class is deprecated. The functions can now be called from the Gtk class to avoid deprecation warnings.
• Gtk composite template classes are now registered with TemplateTypes.register(class) instead of the old Types.register(class). In previous java-gi versions, there were two Types classes, one in GObject and one in Gtk (to register template classes), and users had to carefully import the correct one. Renaming the Gtk Types class to TemplateTypes will make the distinction clear. The old class is still available in this release, but has been deprecated and will be removed in an upcoming release.
• Many functions that required closure parameters now expect callback methods (or lambdas). This makes much more sense in a statically-typed language like Java. (Technically this means that when regular functions in GObject-Introspection are "shadowed by" a _with_closures function, we ignore the "shadowed by" annotation.)
• #129: A new API has been added to create GObject property bindings with transformations. It works the same as in Gtk-rs: The second example on this page would look like this in Java:

button1.<Integer, Integer>bindProperty("number", button2, "number")
        .transformTo(n -> n + 1)
        .transformFrom(n -> n - 1)
        .bidirectional()
        .syncCreate()
        .build();

• #131: Java-GI now contains a custom org.gnome.glib.HashTable wrapper class for GHashTable that implements the java.util.Map<K,V> interface. The keys and values can be strings, pointers (MemorySegments in Java), or heap-allocated classes/structs (i.e. anything that implements the Java-GI Proxy interface). The class is not meant to be used instead of java.util.HashMap, but will help Java developers work with native functions that return or expect a GHashTable.
• #139: The API to manually override a GObject virtual method with a Java lambda has been removed. It is still possible to override a virtual method with a java.lang.reflect.Method parameter (as used by Types.register(classname)). Furthermore, no accessors will be generated anymore to directly get/set the parent_class field of typeclasses. These APIs were unsafe to use (to put it mildly) and with these changes, the amount of generated code in Java-GI has been reduced significantly.
• #140: Trailing flag parameters can now be set with either a Set or varargs. For example, to create a new application, use one of these two constructors:

public Application(@Nullable String applicationId, Set<ApplicationFlags> flags);
public Application(@Nullable String applicationId, ApplicationFlags... flags);

• #141: It is now possible to specify the name of the namespace for your own GObject-derived classes in package-info.java with the new @Namespace(name="...") annotation. The namespace name will be prefixed to the class name.
• Improved parameter references in generated Javadoc.
• All code examples on the website are now available in both Java and Kotlin.

Fixes:

• #106: The different length of long native data types on Windows (long is 32-bit) versus Linux and macOS (long is 64-bit) is now fully implemented in Java-GI. The generated Java API supports the lowest common denominator (int), and casts to the correct native datatype at runtime. Classes, interfaces and structs with long fields use two separate MemoryLayouts in Java internally that contain the correct alignment and padding for the applicable platform.
• #117: Fixed a ClassCastException when casting the ListModel items returned by File.openMultipleFinish() to File. (Thanks @SudoDios for reporting this.)
• The wrapper classes for GList and GSList now properly free the list items after use.
• #120: Fixed a crash when using variadic functions on macOS.
• Improved the MemoryLayout generator to correctly handle nested structs and unions.
• #124: Copy structs and boxed types when returned from a native function without ownership transfer. This will call the copy or ref function defined for that type (or g_boxed_copy for boxed types). This prevents a segfault when the struct is disposed somewhere else while Java is still using it.
• #125: Improve memory management for methods with callback parameters that have a DestroyNotify callback.

Miscellanious:

• The allocate() factory methods on struct/boxed types have been removed. These methods were replaced by constructors and had already been deprecated in the previous release.
• The Gtk "Getting Started" guide has been ported to Java, and is now available on the Java-GI website, with all example code.
• Two new examples were added to the java-gi-examples repository: ColumnViewDatagrid and Spacewar.

Availability and dependencies:

• The new release is available on Maven Central.
• Java-GI requires OpenJDK 22 or later.
• The bindings are based on the GNOME 47 libraries. These need to be installed.

Full Changelog: 0.10.2...0.11.0