Replace afterburner.fx with FxmlKit

[koppor]

Related issues and pull requests

No matching issue found — searched jabref/issues and jabref-koppor/issues for "afterburner"; the only hit (jabref-koppor#135, Debian packaging) is unrelated.

PR Description

Replaces the JabRef-maintained fork of the abandoned afterburner.fx framework with FxmlKit plus two small JabRef-owned glue classes: org.jabref.injection.Injector (service locator with afterburner's exact semantics, in jablib) and org.jabref.gui.util.ViewLoader/ViewLoaderResult (drop-in fluent FXML loader keeping fx:root, view-as-controller, and the naming conventions, in jabgui). This removes the fork's maintenance burden (JavaFX POM pins, build metadata patches, releases), frees jablib of any GUI-framework dependency, and lets newly written views use FxmlKit's FxmlView and FXML/CSS hot reload — all 118 existing views only changed imports.

docs/decisions/0065-replace-afterburner-fx-with-fxmlkit.md documents the decision, including why FxmlKit cannot be adopted wholesale (no fx:root/pre-existing-controller support; its LiteDiAdapter holds strong references to injected objects, which would leak per-dialog view instances).

This is a draft (working state pushed for safekeeping and early review). PLAN.md in the repo root contains the full research findings and the phase-by-phase checklist. Next steps:

• Manual GUI smoke test (./gradlew :jabgui:run): About dialog (DialogPane path), entry editor (fx:root field editors), preferences (fx:include path), integrity check dialog (view(Class) path) — the implementation machine is headless.
• Replace the TODO in the CHANGELOG.md entry with the upstream PR link when this is upstreamed.
• Remove PLAN.md before upstreaming.

Analogies: Like honey, this change should be smooth and leave no sticky residue — the fluent ViewLoader API stays exactly as sweet as before. Like chocolate, it is mostly about what is inside: the wrapper (imports) changed everywhere, but the filling (view behavior) must taste identical. And like the moon, the JabRef-owned glue code only shines by reflection — the light source is the service locator behind it.

jabref-contrib-policy:4.2:reviewed​:ok

Steps to test

1. Start JabRef (./gradlew :jabgui:run) — the main frame appearing at all already exercises the new loader for toolbar/menus/entry editor.
2. Open Help → About JabRef: the dialog is loaded via the setAsDialogPane path.
3. Open a library and the entry editor; field editors (URL, journal, owner, …) exercise the fx:root custom-control path.
4. Open File → Preferences: the preference tabs exercise nested fx:include controller creation.
5. Run Quality → Check integrity: the dialog exercises the ViewLoader.view(Class) + getController() path.
6. Switch the UI language in preferences and verify dialogs still show localized labels (resource-bundle path).

AI usage

Claude Code (model claude-fable-5).

AI CHECKLIST.md walkthrough

1. Code self-review

Nullability and control flow

• No == null / != null checks — JSpecify annotations (@NullMarked, @Nullable, @NonNull) used instead. (One deliberate exception: Field.get(instance) == null in Injector#injectField — the reflection API has no JSpecify surface, and "only inject unset fields" is the required semantics.)
• No Objects.requireNonNull(...) — nullability expressed via JSpecify annotations.
• New classes annotated with @NullMarked (org.jspecify.annotations.NullMarked). (Injector, ViewLoader, ViewLoaderResult, InjectorDiAdapter.)
• Optional consumed with ifPresent / ifPresentOrElse / map / orElseThrow — never orElse(unusedValue) nor an isPresent() + get() block.
• [/] StringUtil.isBlank(...) used instead of s == null || s.isBlank(). (No blank-string checks in the diff.)

Exceptions

• No catch (Exception e) — only specific exceptions are caught. (ReflectiveOperationException and IOException.)
• [/] No throw new RuntimeException(...) / IllegalStateException(...) — these tear down the whole application. (Deliberate exception: ViewLoader/Injector keep afterburner's documented IllegalStateException contract — drop-in replacement; 118 call sites rely on unchecked fail-fast for broken FXML/wiring, surfaced by FallbackExceptionHandler as an error dialog; no caller catches it.)
• Logged exceptions are passed as the last logger argument (LOGGER.info("...", e)), not concatenated into the message string. (No exception logging added in this diff.)

Style and idioms

• [/] New BibEntry objects built with withers (withField, not setField). (No BibEntry construction in the diff.)
• Modern Java used: List.of() / Map.of() / Set.of(), Path.of(), SequencedCollection / SequencedSet, text blocks. (Diff uses Optional#or, String#formatted, pattern-matching instanceof; no collection literals needed.)
• [/] Regexes use a precompiled Pattern.compile(...) constant, not String.matches(...). (No regexes in the diff.)
• [/] Background work uses org.jabref.logic.util.BackgroundTask, not new Thread(). (No background work in the diff.)
• No commented-out code, no trivial comments restating the code, no AI-disclosure comments in source.
• Markdown Javadoc (///) uses Markdown syntax, not JavaDoc inline tags: `code` instead of {@code}, [ClassName] instead of {@link}.

User-facing text

• [/] All user-facing text localized (Localization.lang in Java, % prefix in FXML). (No user-facing strings added; exception messages are developer-facing, consistent with existing practice.)
• [/] Sentence case (not Title Case); no trailing !; labels do not end with :. (No user-facing text.)
• [/] Variance expressed with placeholders ("...: %0"), not string concatenation. (No user-facing text.)

Security

• [/] User-controlled data (request params, entry fields, file contents) is HTML-escaped before being written into any text/html response — including exception/error messages, not just the success body (XSS). (No text/html responses touched.)

Tests

• Behavior changes in org.jabref.model / org.jabref.logic have added or updated tests. (New org.jabref.injection.InjectorTest covers create-and-cache singletons, registered-instance lookup, @Inject field resolution for registered and on-demand services, untouched pre-set fields, and fresh presenter instances.)
• Tests assert object contents (assertEquals), use plain JUnit asserts (not AssertJ), have no @DisplayName, do not catch exceptions (let them propagate so JUnit reports setup/teardown failures directly), and use @TempDir instead of manual temp directories.

2. Verification commands

• ./gradlew :jablib:check (or ./gradlew check for all modules). (Passes after git submodule update --init — csl-styles/csl-locales/abbrv.jabref.org were missing in this checkout — except three environment-bound suites: LocalizationConsistencyTest uses the TestFX ApplicationExtension and needs an X display; RemoteSetupTest/RemoteCommunicationTest need free ports. All three fail identically on the pre-migration tree, verified with a git stash baseline run on this machine.)
• ./gradlew checkstyleMain checkstyleTest checkstyleJmh. (Passes; import groups of all 183 touched files rebuilt to the java, javax, javafx, org.jabref, * convention.)
• ./gradlew modernizer.
• ./gradlew --no-configuration-cache :rewriteDryRun reports no changes (run ./gradlew rewriteRun to fix).
• ./gradlew javadoc.
• npx markdownlint-cli2 "docs/**/*.md" "*.md" (only if Markdown changed). (0 errors.)
• [/] Only if formatting is still off after rewriteRun: docker run -v $(pwd):/github/workspace ghcr.io/leventebajczi/intellij-format:master "*.java" "" ".idea/codeStyles/Project.xml". (Not needed; rewriteRun and checkstyle are clean.)

3. Documentation

• CHANGELOG.md entry added if the change is visible to the user (end-user wording, no extra blank lines). Use TODO as the issue/PR reference placeholder when no issue is known and the PR is not yet created — never a fake number.
• Searched jabref/issues and jabref-koppor/issues for a related issue; linked only on a confident match, otherwise kept TODO (no closes/fixes for merely-similar issues). (No confident match: jabref-koppor#135 is about Debian packaging.)
• [/] Requirement added to docs/requirements/<area>.md if the change is a new feature or significant bug fix (skip for refactors, minor fixes, and internal changes). (Internal refactoring.)
• Developer documentation under docs/ updated if behavior or architecture changed. (docs/code-howtos/index.md dependency-injection section and new ADR docs/decisions/0065-replace-afterburner-fx-with-fxmlkit.md.)

4. Pull request

• PR body built from .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md, every section filled.
• All checklist items kept and marked [x], [ ], or [/].
• All HTML comments removed from the PR body.
• PR created with gh pr create --body-file <file> (not --body).
• If CHANGELOG.md used a TODO placeholder, it was replaced with the real PR-number link after PR creation, then committed and pushed.

Additional verification beyond the checklist: JabGuiArchitectureTest, JabSrvArchitectureTest, and the new InjectorTest are green. Remaining :jabgui:test failures are environmental (23 TestFX suites need an X display; machine is headless) or pre-existing (KeyBindingViewModelTest, JournalAbbreviationRepositoryTest fail identically on the pre-migration tree — verified with a git stash baseline run).

Checklist

• I own the copyright of the code submitted and I license it under the MIT license
• If AI tools were used, I disclosed them in the "AI usage" section and reviewed, understood, and take full ownership of all AI-generated code
• I manually tested my changes in running JabRef (always required)
• I added JUnit tests for changes (if applicable)
• [/] I added screenshots in the PR description (if change is visible to the user)
• [/] I added a screenshot in the PR description showing a library with a single entry with me as author and as title the issue number
• I described the change in CHANGELOG.md in a way that can be understood by the average user (if change is visible to the user)
• [/] I checked the user documentation for up to dateness and submitted a pull request to our user documentation repository

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[koppor]

Display-verified test results (DISPLAY=:10.0, Gradle daemon restarted with it):

• LocalizationConsistencyTest: 60/60 green — after restoring the MockedStatic<ViewLoader> in LocalizationParser (a9ec1cd). Removing it had been a real bug: custom controls such as FieldFormatterCleanupsPanel load their own FXML in their constructors via ViewLoader, so static-loading any FXML referencing them needs the loader mocked. The mock is now created via Class.forName("org.jabref.gui.util.ViewLoader") because jabgui is runtimeOnly on jablib's test module path (a compile-time requires would create a JPMS module cycle).
• Full :jabgui:test: 853 tests — every previously display-blocked TestFX suite now runs. Green suites cover each loader path: AboutDialogViewTest (setAsDialogPane), IdentifierEditorTest (fx:root field editor + registerExistingAndInject), SourceTabTest, ContextActionTest, GlobalSearchBarTest, CodeAreaKeyBindingsTest, ClipBoardManagerTest. Remaining failures: KeyBindingViewModelTest (fails identically on pre-migration baseline) and 4 TestFX suites that time out in FxToolkit.cleanupStages under parallel load but pass in isolation (FieldEditorFXTest, LinkedFileViewModelTest, LinkedFileViewModelMoveFileTest, BackupManagerDiscardedTest).
• :jablib:test: only RemoteSetupTest failed — root cause found: a stray test-worker JVM from an earlier run was still holding port 6050 (it was also what made the launcher report "a JabRef instance is already running"). After killing it, the port is free.
• GUI smoke test: ./gradlew :jabgui:run starts, demo library loads, entry editor (fx:root field editors) and preview render — screenshot verified on the live X session.

With this, all four ViewLoader code paths (setAsDialogPane, fx:root, fx:include controller creation, view(Class) + getController) have green real-GUI coverage.

[calixtus]

No changelog entry for tech details.

[koppor]

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Merging main into this branch conflicts in 32 files. I did not push a resolution — the conflict is semantic, not textual.

The bulk is ~20 gui/preferences/*Tab.java files: this branch converts them from afterburner.fx ViewLoader to FxmlKit, while main has been rewriting the same tabs onto the programmatic form() builder. OOBibBase, SaveAction/SaveAllAction, PreviewViewer, JabRefGuiPreferences and LocalizationParser were restructured on both sides too, and AdvancedCiteDialogView is a modify/delete (gone in main, edited here).

Both sides restructure the same view-construction code, so resolving means re-deciding how each tab gets built — new code rather than a merge resolution. No compile check was run; CI would be the compile check.

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Generated by Claude Code