Installing JavaFX 15 on Mac

the second command that DomQ posted was incorrect:

brew tap bell-sw/liberica

brew install --cask liberica-jdk15-full

My experience is that homebrew-liberica just works:

brew tap bell-sw/liberica
brew cask install liberica-jdk15-full

You can either use the terminal or set up a launch configuration in VS Code.

To use the terminal, you can either install Liberica or download the latest JavaFX from Gluon (or the Early-Access build). To compile your *.java file, make sure to specify and set the --module-path and the -cp as command arguments for javac on the CLI.

For example, if you downloaded the JavaFX SDK to your ~/Downloads directory (i.e., you downloaded JavaFX 16 and extracted it in your ordinary Downloads folder), then you will run something like

javac --module-path "$(eval echo ~$USER)/Downloads/javafx-sdk-16/lib/*" -cp "$(eval echo ~$USER)/Downloads/javafx-sdk-16/lib/*" -d . JavaFXThing.java

Then, in order to run your program, you'll use:

java --module-path "$(eval echo ~$USER)/Downloads/javafx-sdk-16/lib"  --add-modules javafx.controls,javafx.fxml JavaFXThing 

Check what modules you need to specify for the --add-modules parameter here: API documentation for JavaFX 15

Here is a sample launch.json to enable debug launching in VS Code:

{
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "type": "java",
            "name": "Launch JavaFX Class",
            "request": "launch",
            "vmArgs": "--module-path \"/Users/kevinmou/Downloads/javafx-sdk-16/lib\"  --add-modules javafx.controls,javafx.fxml",
            "mainClass": "${file}"
        }
    ]
}

For JDK, I recommend using Liberica with Homebrew, since it is easy to keep up-to-date (yay, Homebrew! ) and Liberica takes care of the paths and environment variables (including JavaFX). To install, in a shell, try:

brew tap bell-sw/liberica
brew cask install liberica-jdk15-full

Then, to update

brew update && brew cask upgrade

You need to take care with environment variables mixing with GUI applications on macOS. Setting PATH_TO_FX in the terminal likely didn't set the value for the IntelliJ IDE. You will note that the instructions at https://openjfx.io/openjfx-docs/#IDE-Intellij explicitly mention setting that value within the IDE, not from the Terminal.

I strongly suggest using Gradle or Maven with the code samples given at https://OpenJFX.io/ as a starting point. Confirm that the builds work from the command line before debugging what the IDE might be doing differently.

You can also install a JDK that includes the JavaFX modules. A few OpenJDK providers have such builds. For example:

• BellSoft produces a "Full JDK" Liberica JDK install, https://bell-sw.com/pages/downloads/
• Azul produces a "JDK FX" java package for Zulu builds of OpenJDK, https://www.azul.com/downloads/zulu-community/