Version 0.7.0 New and Noteworthy

⚠️ Breaking changes — JDK 17 is now required

CDT now requires JDK 17 or later at runtime.

The Nebula grid and chips widgets declare Bundle-RequiredExecutionEnvironment: JavaSE-17 upstream, so all Java now compiled with --release 17 (class-file major version 61).

(If you forget, ui.nebula's top-level fail-fast check turns that into a clear IllegalStateException at namespace require time.)

No Clojure code changes are required in consumer apps — purely an environment bump. From an API perspective, this release is purely additive.

53 Eclipse Nebula widgets bundled in the JAR

The CDT JAR now ships compiled bytecode for 53 widgets from the Eclipse Nebula Widgets project:

• Foundation: opal.commons, cwt (intra-Nebula dependencies, pure-SWT).
• Layout & navigation: pshelf, compositetable, pgroup, collapsiblebuttons, breadcrumb, header, nebulatoolbar, titledseparator, floatingtext, panels, tiles.
• Pickers & input: calendarcombo, cdatetime, formattedtext, textassist, passwordrevealer, multichoice, duallist, ctreecombo, tablecombo, columnbrowser, propertytable, preferencewindow, calculator, horizontalspinner, nebulaslider, rangeslider, roundedcheckbox, roundedswitch, switchbutton.
• Display & status: led, progresscircle, starrating, chips, badgedlabel, stepbar, commons, ctree, grid, gallery, oscilloscope, ganttchart, heapmanager, splitbutton, fontawesome, notifier, dialog, logindialog, tipoftheday, promptsupport, carousel, checkboxgroup.

To use a Nebula widget, (:require [ui.nebula]) before (:require [ui.SWT]) in the consuming namespace. ui.nebula does three things in order: JDK 17 check; SWT extraction (via ui.internal.SWT-deps); Nebula JAR extraction onto the same runtime DynamicClassLoader. Only after both are on the loader does this namespace require ui.SWT, so ui.internal.reflectivity's classpath scan sees both layers and define-inits auto-generates init fns (pshelf, pshelf-item, led, ...) for the bundled widgets.

(ns my.ui
  (:require [ui.nebula]                                     ; MUST come first
            [ui.SWT :as ui :refer [application shell pshelf pshelf-item label]])
  (:import  [org.eclipse.swt SWT]
            [org.eclipse.swt.layout FillLayout]))

Running the bundled example:

cd examples/nebula-widget && make run

Build helper ui.build.swt — internal-only for v0.7.0

CDT itself uses a new ui.build.swt namespace to compile the bundled Nebula sources against an extracted SWT jar at build time. Exposing it as a public client API is deferred to a future release.

The reason: the runtime classloader split (the CDT JAR lives on the JVM startup classpath while bundled SWT lives on a runtime DynamicClassLoader after pomegranate extraction) means a custom Java widget compiled by the consumer would land on the parent AppClassLoader, while SWT lives on the child loader — and parent loaders can't see child loaders. The result is ClassNotFoundException: org/eclipse/swt/widgets/Composite the first time the custom widget is used. The bundled Nebula widgets sidestep this by traveling INSIDE the CDT JAR as nebula.jar, which gets extracted onto the same loader as SWT at runtime — but that trick doesn't generalize to client-compiled widgets without an upstream loader-strategy change.

See Plans/todo/compile-java-swt-widgets-context.md (specifically the "Runtime classloader problem" section) for the full diagnosis and the four options that were considered. A future v0.8.0+ release ships either a child-first classloader inside CDT or an equivalent client- loader strategy and reopens the downstream ui.build.swt story.

Vendored Nebula sources at a pinned upstream SHA

Nebula sources are vendored under vendor/nebula/ at a pinned upstream SHA (see vendor/nebula/VERSION). The build is self-contained: no env vars, no sibling directories, no network at build time. Bumping to a newer Nebula version is a single step:

# edit `nebula-sha` in build.clj, then:
make update-vendored-nebula
# review the diff under vendor/nebula/, commit.

CDT does not require an Equinox runtime

The bundled Nebula widgets are curated to work without an Eclipse Equinox container: any widget that hard-requires Activator.getDefault() returning non-null, NLS resource bundles, or the Eclipse extension registry is not in this release.

(Eight widgets — pagination, picture, richtext, roundedtoolbar, segmentedbar, timeline, treemapper, xviewer — were deferred to a future release that introduces a minimal P2 fetcher for compile-time JFace + supporting bundles. Four more — bidilayout, datechooser, radiogroup, geomap — were reclassified during audit and likewise deferred.)

Prior N&N