1.12.1.3 "Drunken Master Mode"

Java 21! Finally, you can run Gradle using JDK 21, the current LTS version, using a project generated by gdx-liftoff! The actual language features and APIs of Java 21 won't be available unless you target desktop only, but the main thing is that you can download the latest Java and run the latest Liftoff without mysterious build errors! This is made possible by Gradle 8.5, released a few days ago. There are also some small but important changes for Android projects, in particular the update to SDK 34 for new projects (because the Google Play Store requires or will require a recent target SDK version to submit an app). The frequently-mentioned solution for listing internal files, written up by @lyze237 here, is now included by default as a task run on compilation in Lifttoff projects, with some small updates for recent Gradle changes. An assets.txt file was already generated for GWT projects, but for some reason not for any others.

Other features here are mostly related to the improving Graal Native Image support. All resources in the assets/ folder now get gathered into a monstrous regular expression behind-the-scenes, and that is used to let Graal Native Image access all the filenames in your assets, but not much more as a resource. This keeps file sizes down, since it doesn't let in any (well, not many) files from outside your project that are part of Graal. Common file names might be picked up as duplicates, but either Graal or Gradle seems to not be able to tell that forward slashes are valid in paths on all major OSes, and insists on using backslashes in some places. That means that only the file names can be used, and not their paths, which is unfortunate.

OK, good luck and have fun!