Swing Application Framework - Forks and Alternatives

Forks and Alternatives

Several forks of the original implementation have been started by open-source communities, and several other application framework libraries have been created to achieve goals similar to those of JSR 296.

Better Swing Application Framework

The Better Swing Application Framework project, or BSAF, is a fork of version 1.03 of the original appframework project. BSAF was created at Project Kenai in September 2009 and is currently the most active of the forks. Its goals are to eliminate bugs and execute small design fixes on the original appframework implementation while maintaining compatibility with version 1.03.

Guice Utilities & Tools Set

The Guice Utilities & Tools Set, or GUTS, is an implementation of JSR 296 that combines the appframework with the Google Guice Dependency Injection library. Like BSAF, it is also hosted at Project Kenai. Unlike BSAF, GUTS is making a break-away from the "problematic singleton" pattern. This project began in June 2009, and is currently active.

Swing Application Framework Fork

The Swing Application Framework Fork, or SAFF, is a fork of appframework 1.03. It is currently hosted at GitHub. However, this project has been dormant since October 2009.

TreasureMap

TreasureMap is a library providing standalone use of appframework 1.03's ResourceMap implementation.

NetBeans Platform

The NetBeans Platform is a robust Swing application framework, with many more features, as well as much more documentation. Because of the JSR failure/hold, SAF has been removed from Netbeans as of version 7.1. The developers seem to have no desire to provide any alternative, and suggest that the Netbeans platform is the right mechanism for porting SAF projects to a supported platform.

Eclipse RCP

Eclipse RCP is a big SWT (an alternative to Swing) application framework, for bigger projects, needs more time for understanding.