B4x rant thread

Lots of love for B4 so let’s flip the script. Tell me what’s wrong with B4x. Let loose. Don’t tell me it’s perfect. I won’t believe you.

i wasted 3 days last weekend installing the things need to run b4j.

manage to get B4J ide working and coding doesn’t look to bad on windows machine.

so i generate a simple “hello world” and it actually build exe file which i can run easily.

i try to run the jar on the windows machine without success.

try running on the mac osx with jre installe but without success…

give up after messing around for 3 days without any luck

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I think most will complain that it is using Java, but one can hardly use this as a wrong for B4X: It is just the nature of the beast. And a lot of complains I’ve read about Java are way outdated. I remember a post on the Xojo forum where even speed was compared and Java was faster than Xojo (my post was unfortunately removed very fast from the forum, I wonder why… :thinking:).

  • Being a Windows IDE only is a problem for most Mac/Linux users.
  • Finding the right libraries is not so easy. B4X has grown so fast the last few years, hundreds of libs exist, but they are spread around the forum. Can be a bit frustrating for beginners.
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What exactly went wrong? It is literally downloading two things from the site, unzipping one and running the other exe. If I can be of any assistance, let me know.

What exactly went wrong? It is literally downloading two things from the site, unzipping one and running the other exe.

I found the instructions a little vague but got B4J running. Havent tried making a distributable yet.
B4A apps working very fine on a cheapo Android tablet I got for £60

I cant yet work out where ‘additional libraries’ are meant to go.

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My ‘rant’:

6 ways to do everything. :slight_smile:
Search the forums for a solution to a problem and you find a post that tells you how - yippee.
And it works.
But it’s pot luck if you arrive at the ‘current best practice’ using forum searches.

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like i say, i already got the development tools. i can create a hello world or changing the text to something else and do debug and build for release.

i need to be able to install to client machine easily without installing jre on the mac. i know i can create exe file.

next i install the jre on the mac and copy the whole of the objects folder with the result.jar and try to run the jar file. all i got is the icon for the jave (coffee with a pencil) and nothing else

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B4X lacks of a centraliced and well organized documentation. So it can be a little confusing for newcomers to use the forum for that.

But, lets be honest, the quality of Xojo documentation is organized, but content is not great

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No X-plat IDE, uses Java, has non-native controls.
Does it have a compiler and can you create standalone executables?
Can you call OS APIs?

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Note that B4X suite is made of 4 products, not just B4J:
B4A - Native Android apps.
B4i - Native iOS apps.
B4R - Arduino / ESP programs.
B4J - Desktop and server solutions based on Java and JavaFX.

About B4J apps:

Creating a standalone Windows package that doesn’t depend on anything is a matter of single click: Integrated B4JPackager11 - The simple way to distribute standalone UI apps | B4X Programming Forum

Creating a similar package for Mac or Linux is a bit more complicated but once you get used to the tools it is not too complicated. No doubt that there is room for improvement with Mac distributions, especially with the recent Apple restrictions.

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The ‘AddLibraries’ folder is a place where you can put other libraries you’ve downloaded from the forum. It is more of a organizational thing, as in theory they work if placed in the normal libraries folder. But it just is better to keep the ‘official’ library folder uncluttered.

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The additional libraries folder is configured under Tools - Configure Paths.

Java was icluded in REALbasic 1.0… :wink:

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it would be lovely to make this part much easier to do.

right now, i cannot even make the jar to run on the mac

  1. Download OpenJDK 11 to your Mac: https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/threads/b4jpackager11-the-simplest-way-to-distribute-ui-apps.99835/#content (must be downloaded from this page)

  2. Use this Java to run B4J-Bridge on your Mac: https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/threads/38804/#content
    B4J-Bridge is very important. It allows you to remote debug your app.

  3. Once the app is ready, you can run B4JPackager11 to create a standalone package. Note that there is no executable (on Mac). It is started with a shell script. This needs to be improved.

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is there a sample for the shell script???

where do i put this folder??

where should i put this folder?

It is created automatically when you run B4JPackager11 on the Mac.

Wherever you want. It doesn’t matter.

Same as above.

I recommend you to start with programming with B4J on Windows. It can be a VM. Once you become familiar with the tool, things will be simpler and it will be easier to switch to remote debugging.

so how do the remote debugging know where is the packager and bridge located???