Changes in 4.4.0

Processing 4.4.0 focuses on modernizing the project's infrastructure to support future development.

Key updates include migrating the build system from Ant to Gradle and beginning the transition from Swing to Jetpack Compose Multiplatform. Additionally, this release introduces various quality-of-life improvements for developers working on the codebase. With these changes, we hope to lower the barrier for contributing to the project.

What's New in Processing 4.4.0?

• New Gradle build system for the Processing IDE.
• Installers for macOS (dmg), Windows (msi), linux (snap)
• Windows: Start menu item
• Part of the UI is now using Jetpack Compose
• Kotlin Support in the codebase
• New Splash screen ✨
• New pde:// schema and functionality

Most of the changes were done in #888 and #968.

Known Issues

Nobody's perfect, and that goes for this release too. We've done our best to spot and address any regressions and new bugs, but there are still a few that couldn't be addressed in time for this release. Here are some issues we're aware of in 4.4.0. Many of them have been patched already and will be gone in 4.4.1.

• The beta welcome message is displaying beta.window.title, beta.title, and beta.message instead of the actual content.
• The Movie Maker tool is missing.
• The title is not legible when the window is out of focus on macOS.
• On Windows, when changing theme, the title bar color doesn't update until restart.
• Because the title bar is the same as the theme color, it’s unclear where to click and drag the window.
• JavaFX throws an error on macOS (arm).
• The splash screen doesn't fade in completely on some configurations.
• The top of the editor window is higher than normal on Windows and Linux.

Build it!

We've done a lot of work to make it easier to build Processing for yourself. To get started, check out the build instructions.