eMusic/J 0.19 released – now with less mess!

After several months of not getting around to it, I’ve finally put out a new version of eMusic/J. There aren’t a huge number of changes in this one, but there is one that will be significant for new users: it no longer requires Sun Java, any 1.4 Java environment will do the job. Thanks to Retroweaver, eMusic/J can be run in a completely Free Software environment. And, as a more practical benefit, no more jumping through hoops to get the right version of Java installed, and then recognised as default by the system. I’ve tested it on GCJ 4.1 (which comes with Ubuntu) and there was no noticable difference.

I hope that this gets me closer to being able to do a native build, and have it run without a Java runtime at all. However, despite running it just fine, GCJ is unable to compile it (even compiling the bytecode – the source is still 1.5, which I expect it to choke on anyway). If anyone has experience with this kind of thing, please let me know!

Here’s the changelog:

• Added ‘User Manual’ option in help menu, which opens a browser (by
  default Firefox, this can be changed by using the ‘undocumented’
  browserCommand option in the prefs file.) – this should have been there some time ago, but I kept putting it off, planning to try using JDIC to do it. However, JDIC doesn’t provide a 64-bit build, and I don’t yet have one of those machines myself to build it on. So I did it by hand.
• The update dialogue now offers to open a browser to the application homepage – as above
• Updated SWT to stable 3.2 build – a recent SuSE update has killed SWT for a few people. Hopefully this fixes it. Unfortunately, I can’t test it.
• Added option to automatically remove completed downloads from the downloads list. This happens 30 seconds after it finishes. – I don’t see much point keeping a list of completed downloads at the top of the screen, you’re normally just interested in the ones that have finished. So now, completed ones go away after 30 seconds (this can be turned off)
• Builds now use retroweaver to gain JDK1.4 compatibility. This means it works with GCJ, and probably other open JREs. – probably the most important change, but the one that current users will (hopefully) notice the least

Don’t delay! Go get yours today!