Let's write a Kotlin main()-function that launches the Swing application:

While you can easily use Kotlin with Maven, the current Jetpack Compose for Desktop early preview documentation focusses on Gradle. So I decided to move the project to IntelliJ. Although there still is a Kotlin plugin for NetBeans this seems to be no longer developed actively.

Originally the app was written in Java using NetBeans and utilizing Maven. The first step is to make the source code Kotlin-ready. This is where the transformation will take place. A couple of days ago I created a repo on GitHub and pushed the source. For more than ten years the app was burried in the depths of my hard drive. The user can then open these files and delete the duplicates. Once the user has entered a base directory, the app browses through all child folders and searches for files which have the same MD5 hash. Its sole purpose is to find duplicate files.

The app I will be transforming is old, very old. Hence, I decided to try to transform a Java Swing user interface to Compose Desktop. The best way to learn something new is to use it and to play with it. As Jetpack Compose is the next big thing in Android ui and I have always had a passion for the desktop I felt I just must know how Compose for Desktop looks and feels. Recently, JetBrains announced a preview version of Jetpack Compose for Desktop.

Kotlin swing