The future of GWT 2.x By Colin Alworth #GWTcon2017 Firenze, September 28-29th 2017

1. The Future of GWT 2.x
Presenter:
Colin Alworth
Co-Founder
colin@vertispan.com

2. The Boring Version of This
Morning’s Discussion
The Future of GWT 2.x
Presenter:
Colin Alworth
Co-Founder
colin@vertispan.com

3. 3
JSNI/JSOs - Rewrite everything in JsInterop
Generators - Rewrite all in APT
Modules - change over to smaller projects, or write build rules
MigrationAnyone have a lot of work to do?

4. 4
Ecosystem - assist in applying changes to gwt-user, and all other
dependencies
Build tools - still being created
Stability - not all teams adopt new tools the moment they arrive
MigrationAnyone have a lot of work to do?

5. 5
How has GWT 2 continued to grow?
How will GWT 2 change as J2CL/GWT3 matures?
What will happen to GWT 2 after GWT3 is here, and is used?
GWT 2.x

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6
Support Java7 language, JRE
Early Super Dev Mode
Code splitting fragment merging more reliable
23 Jan 2014
Super Dev Mode is now default
Beginning of JsInterop
JDK performance improvements
20 November 2014
Recent GWT VersionsYour great subtitle in this line
2.6
2.7

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7
Support Java8 language, JRE
Final JsInterop spec
GSS support, including CSS3
20 October 2016
JsInterop fixes and improvements for Elemental2
JsInterop export flags, and new native type names
Bugfixes
24 April 2017
2.8
2.8.1

8. 8
Support running in Java 9 environment
Bugfixes, cleanup
Soon
Java 9 language support, JRE emulation
Later
2.8.2
2.9

9. 9
Most GWT projects are very large, may take time to upgrade
Not all of GWT 2 can be easily ported to JsInterop
Automatic support for Generators/Linkers/JSOs may not be possible
GWT 2 in the land of 3.xGWT 2 isn’t going away

10. 10
The community is productive in GWT2
Our roadmap is designed to support backward compatibility
Brutal honesty: Not every project will make sense to upgrade to GWT 3
GWT 2 in the land of 3.xGWT 2 isn’t going away

11. 11
Some teams still support ancient browsers
Maintenance cost is minimal
Failure to upgrade is self-limiting, no Java8+, no JsInterop
Legacy Dev Mode
Yeah, this won’t die either.

12. 12
Teams staying on older GWT can still take advantage of these
J2CL has other tricks that let us do things that GWT 2 can’t do if removed
Failure to upgrade is self-limiting, no Java8+, no JsInterop
Generators, Rebind Rules, Linkers

13. 13
Improvements can still be made
Modularization may still be a good idea, but generally deleting saves little
Less flashy than the latest unsupported browser spec, but long lived for
teams that need it
Widgets and more from gwt-user.jar

14. 14
GWT 2.x is in good shape, generates small, efficient JS
A wide range of browsers and tools are supported
Current tooling and ecosystem keeps teams productive
Bottom line

15. 15
Updates to Java
Ecosystem changes to ease migrations
Modularization, internal updates
Continuing Improvements

16. 16
Bugfix release
Support running compiler, dev mode on Java 9
https://github.com/gwtproject/gwt/milestone/18
GWT 2.8.2

17. 17
Java 9 language features, JRE emulation
Consider borrowing generated code from J2CL
Deprecations? Remove dead code? Carefully!
GWT 2.9

18. 18
Replace SpeedTracer logging system?
Improve class initializer compile size, performance?
More ideas?
GWT 2.9

19. 19
Aim for releasing parallel or after GWT 3?
Consider compiler modularization
Encourage moving toward ecosystem-driven APT and JsInterop
GWT 2.10

20. 20
Questions?