JabRef-4.1.jar not working on Debian unstable

Help
1

I am using Debian unstable with packages openjfx* libopenjfx* installed.

But I can not stat the current JabRef.

$ java -jar ./JabRef-4.1.jar
Fehler: Hauptklasse org.jabref.JabRefMain konnte nicht gefunden oder geladen werden
Ursache: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javafx/application/Application

I don’t know how to fix it.

$ java -version
openjdk version "9.0.1"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 9.0.1+11-Debian-1)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 9.0.1+11-Debian-1, mixed mode)

No matter if this problem depends on the used Java version! The execution of the jar file should give a human understandable message. Just say “your java vesion is not supported” or something like that. Would be mouch nicer to point to the related bug tickets.

2

JabRef does not yet support Java 9, please downgrade to Java 8 and everything should work. These error messages are not printed by JabRef but by Java itself (i.e. they occur before any JabRef-code is executed) and we thus have no control over them. Yes, it is unfortunate that the messages are a bit cryptic and don’t give a hint towards the actual case.

3
4

We really need help with debian packaging. Even if one cannot code Java, creating new packages really helps. See https://github.com/koppor/jabref/issues/135 for tracking the progress of making JabRef 4.x available on Debian.