iReport not starting using JRE 8

Question

I have downloaded and installed the iReport 4.5 using te Windows installer. But when I try to start the iReport it shows the splash screen but does not start.

My JR

Answer 1

While ireport does not officially support java8, there is a fairly simple way to make ireport (tested with ireport 5.1) work with Java 8. The problem is actually in netbeans. There is a very simple patch, assuming you don't care about the improved security in Java 8:

http://hg.netbeans.org/jet-main/diff/3238e03c676f/openide.util/src/org/openide/util/WeakListenerImpl.java

I didn't even use the exact netbeans source used by ireport. I just downloaded the latest WeakListenerImpl.java in full from the above repository, and compiled it in the ireport directory with platform9/lib/org-openide-util.jar in the compiler classpath

cd blah/blah/iReport-5.1.0
wget http://hg.netbeans.org/jet-main/raw-file/3238e03c676f/openide.util/src/org/openide/util/WeakListenerImpl.java
javac -d . -cp platform9/lib/org-openide-util.jar WeakListenerImpl.java
zip -r platform9/lib/org-openide-util.jar org

I am avoiding running eclipse just to edit jasper reports as long as I can. The netbeans based ireport is so much lighter weight. Running Eclipse is like using emacs.