JabRef-4.1.jar not working on Debian unstable

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.

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.

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.