Eclipse Scout 9.0.0 Release Review

OpenJDK and newer Java version support

Until now, Eclipse Scout was only able to be run out-of-the-box with an Oracle JRE 8 due to required security providers that were not present in the OpenJDK distribution. The introduction of modules in Java 9 prevented Scout from running out-of-the-box as well. These requirements caused problems when adopters wanted to use OpenJDK and had to manually extend Scout to use different Security providers.

With this release, the Eclipse Scout runtime now supports running on OpenJDK 11, but retains code compliance with Java 8. The Eclipse Scout SDK now also supports running with OpenJDK 11.

Dark theme

The new dark theme included in Eclipse Scout 9.0 provides a visually consistent dark style for all standard Scout widgets.

Property Lookup Order changed

In order to allow overriding of Scout properties by environment variables, the lookup order of properties was adjusted to consider environment variables before the property file. Also, since environment variables typically have to conform to stricter naming, the lookup now will consider inexact matches to allow overriding of most properties. See the updated technical documentation, migration guide or release notes for details.

We expect that this feature is especially useful in execution environments (such as Docker or Kubernetes) where the application should be immutable, but still can be adjusted to the specific deployment scenario.

Design improvements, Tweaks, new Widgets and much more

With the ModeSelector and the powerful Popup, two additional widgets have joined the ranks of Scout Classic.

To improve the user experience, the responsiveness of groupboxes has been improved and scrollbars have been made easier to "grab". With more control over the positioning of menubars and over how menu items stack, the UI can be adjusted more than ever for the applications demands.

The new, denser, displaymode allows to display more data on the same amount of screen space.

For all this, and many more details, see the release documentation.