i developed a java console application with the help of maven for my dependency management.
The application is a pure console application, which means the user has to call it via the comandline and has to give parameters with it.
I need to bundle the finiheD jar (with dependencies produced by maven-assembly-plugin) with an complete JRE, because the application has to be able to work on machines without java pre installed.
I tried to use the java packager -deploy command on the finished jar, but it doesnt really work:
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/9/tools/javapackager.htm#JSWOR719
C:\jdk-9.0.4\bin>javapackager.exe -deploy -srcdir C:\folderwithjarinside -outdir C:\outdir -name Toolname -native -appclass [..].core.Main
After that i get a bundle with the jar, the complete jre and an exe to start the whole thing:
When i now start the exe nothing happens and when i start it from an command line again nothing happens and i dont even get console output which SHOULD happen.
When i start the jar allone i get console output even when i dont give parameters and it crashes cause of it.
How do i package my java console application with the JRE and are still able to start it as commandline application provide arguments and see console output?
Thanks in advance
Multiple tools exist for packaging the JRE with your application:
install4j
If you need a specific JRE, you will need access to the target platform, install the JRE there, and call a tool to package it. I recommend to do this just once, push the resulting JRE bundle as a non-Maven artifact to your repository, and use maven-download-plugin to pull it into your installer build.
I can testify that EJ Technologies has great support, typical duration from question to answer is 24-48 hours, depending on how many follow-up questions you have, and I have yet to see a case where their answer was incomplete, mistaken, or misleading.
launch4j (see https://stackoverflow.com/a/7582064/6944068)
I just know that it exists, I never tried it.
The JDK actually comes with a way to do that since 1.7
Rumour has it that is badly designed and frustrating to use, but I don't really know.
I am pretty sure that neither launch4j nor the JDK support cross-platform builds for the installer, i.e. in your deployment toolchain, you need a machine with each target OS for each platform that you wish to have an installer for.
install4j isn't ideal in this respect, but at least you need the other-platform machines just once to create the JRE bundle.
Related
We currently ship a java(jar) installer of our application. Taking into acount the changes to jdk11 we want our users to have the same easy install experience. So, what we are looking for, is to have just one file that can be run even if there is no java installed, it should just start our old java installer.
Probably, this means that we jave to bundle the jre and have a script that runs the jar, but the problem is how to run the batch file natively ? We need this to work on Windows and Mac. Most tools we are looking into require java to run the wrapped jar.
You have to build 2 different scripts/installers, one for each platform. Even looking at very popular software like Chrome, the platform choice is still there (even though you're usually directed to the correct choice based on the information your browser provides them with)
Depending on how much time you can put in this task, the quickest (and dirtiest) solution would be having an archive for each platform that contains the script .bat for Windows and .sh for OS X together with the jre (also different per platform), ask the user to unarchive and run the script which will run your jar with the packed jre. Otherwise, you'll need to create an MSI/exe for windows and a dmg (or other installer type) for MacOs.
I have done the dmg before with a bundled jre and can try to look for the details if you need them (I no longer have access to the code but can probably find the details). It was a free solution but it did require an OS X computer to create the dmg.
One option that I used before and works very well is install4j but the price is not small.
LE: Self contained packaging - although I haven't used this before, it seems like the best current option for your problem.
And an open source option - packr.
that Self Contained packaging doesn't really help, same for packr, same for launch4j. Because all those just generate a application image with a lot of files and directories.
Problem is before that, as an installer you want 1 big exe (or dmg for mac) that does it all, single click
We are already at the stage like SCP or Packr. Because that is easy or current installer.exe and jre\ sub dir and a batch/sh file besides it. Problem is how to get from that directory structure to a single exe that runs.
So what we should have is something that can zip that in a self extracting archive, when clicking on that it should auto extract to the temp dir of the OS, then run directly a command on it (like a batch file or directly in that extracted dir: .\jre\bin\javaw.exe -jar installler.jar)
But nobody seems to have made such a thing, the closest that we have is eclipse with Oomph:
[1] https://git.eclipse.org/c/oomph/org.eclipse.oomph.git/tree/plugins/org.eclipse.oomph.extractor/src/extractor.c
[2] https://git.eclipse.org/c/oomph/org.eclipse.oomph.git/tree/plugins/org.eclipse.oomph.extractor.lib/src/org/eclipse/oomph/extractor/lib/BINExtractor.java
problem is a bit that is doing the extracting through java and still wants a vm first.
Recently I developed a jar file with JavaFX. Now my problem is how to convert it into an executable so it can install and run on other systems which do not have any JDK installed.
Also, when the client system starts from shutdown or hibernate I'd like the executable to run automatically.
I searched a lot on Google and I found content on the internet, but I did not find how I can achieve this.
how I can convert it into exec with the install so it can install into other systems which do not have any JDK on that system
You always need the JRE to run the jar file, there's no way around that. However, since the assumption that almost all systems would have the JRE installed is no longer correct, the normal thing these days is to bundle the entire JRE with the installer and use launch4j to create an exe file.
and another thing I want is that when client system start from shutdown or hibernate exec should run automatically.
You can't do this at the Java level, so it depends what OS you're running on. On windows you could use sc.exe to create a windows service from the executable, or you could just put it in the relevant user's startup folder.
I'm trying to create a self-contained Mac app from a Java application. I've set up the .app directory, configured the Info.plist file, baked in dependencies as well as a Java runtime. I am successfully able to open the .app and launch the program and everything works except for one peculiar piece of code:
ProcessBuilder pb = new ProcessBuilder("open", "/Applications/TextEdit.app");
pb.start();
When I launch the .app, this code does not seem to run or at least do anything. If I open the package contents and launch the .jar, it runs fine. I managed to narrow it down to happen only when the .app contains a Java runtime bundle. Since running a .jar uses the system's Java and running the .app uses the bundled Java, this has got to be the reason I'm struggling.
The version of my Mac's installed Java JDK should be 1.8.0_77.
The bundled version should be 1.8.0_74. I grabbed it from the Moneydance application as I used it for reference when making my .app.
Any help is very appreciated as this should be the final step to release it. I created this question to be more specific than my other question here.
So I'll answer this myself as the issue was somewhat on my side.
The bundled JVM I was using (that I had copied from the Moneydance application) was the culprit. I suspect that the creators of Moneydance might have stripped their runtime bundle of features their app doesn't use in order to reduce the file size. Whatever the reason, my issue was fixed by creating my own bundle.
I did so by copying /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_77.jdk to MyApp.app/Contents/PlugIns/. After that I edited the Info.plist key called JVMRuntime to use the entry jdk1.8.0_77.jdk. My app now uses this JDK instead of the bundle I previously had, and open now works as it should.
Apologies for not doing my homework, but thank you to the people helping. I found the issue while writing reproduction steps, so I might not have found it without you. I guess all I can say to those who might experience something similar is to check your JVM bundle.
I have an application that works fine and that I can execute from a .jar file. But I want to know how to make it runnable from any computer even if there is no JRE or the JRE version is not the good one. I thought about a .exe file but don't know how to do it.
I made my code with Eclipse and it use jxl,jdom and jfx librairies.
I tried to use Inno Setup 5.5.6 but when in Eclipse I run my build.xml as Ant Build it return me an error that says :
"'Launching JFX Build - Myapp' has encountered a problem.
The achive : C:/Program%20Files/eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.swt.win32.win32.x86_64_3.104.0.v20150528.jar which is referenced by classpath, does not exist."
JavaFX provides specific utilities for bundling your application as a native package, which is referred to as "Self contained application packaging". These utilities are provided as a command-line tool, or as ant tasks. Additionally, the common IDEs support this via wizards, either out of the box (NetBeans) or via a plugin (e(fx)clipse for Eclipse). The details of how to use any of these are far beyond the scope of a stack overflow question, but the basic documentation is available here. A tutorial for e(fx)clipse is here.
Briefly, for e(fx)clipse, you should double-click the build.fxbuild file that is created in your project. Under the "Overview" tab, find the "Packaging format" option, and select "All" (or the specific type of package you want to create).
Note that you can only create a package targeted at the platform on which you are building, so if you want to create packages for windows, Mac, and Linux, you will need access to all three types of machine.
I know I am late. I faced same problem a trick worked for me. Look at the given directory in the error message. It contains a space (C:/Program Files/...). Move your e(fx)clipse to another directory where the directory doesn't contains any space.
Not sure it will work your everyone or not but it worked for me.
Thanks
There are various tools that let you wrap your Java application in a Windows executable. Some tools are only simple installers, others allow you to bundle your application with a specific JRE version.
A widely used but commercial tool is install4j, but there is a bunch of other tools, such as WinRun4J.
This is my first question, so apologies for any mistakes. I'll try and give all the info I can. Basically I've written a simple swing application which just loads in image into a JPanel and displays it. I'm using Netbeans 7.1 and I have the latest version of the Java SDK.
Anyway, I've used the "Build" feature in NetBeans 7.1 to deploy my application into a Jar file. When I double click the Jar File on my PC, it runs without a problem. However when I put it on other computers (Tested on 2 others so far, both with the most current JRE) it fails to open, citing the following error:
could not find the main class: swong.Startup. Program will exit
swong is my package name, and Startup is the location of my main method. I have checked the manifest file which is created with Netbeans' build, and it[the manifest] does indeed contain the location of my main method class.
From searching, I've come across similar issues in which the classpath is set wrongly, but I don't understand how this could cause my particular error.
If someone could help me, I would be over the moon. I've been studying java for a year or so, and I've got a good handle down, but I've NEVER been able to make a Jar that runs on a computer which wasn't my own. So, 10 points and thanks in advance.
xo.
EDIT: Thank you for the responses. I'm doing shift work and swamped, but I will test and poke with these responses tomorrow and provide more information. Thanks again. xo
I had d same problem while distributing my app. There is 1 solution that you create a batch file with 'java -jar AppName.jar' and asking user to double click on this batch file to execute your app. What i did was to provide a JRE installation exe(eg: jre_1.7.0) with your app.
Now create a Batch file (install.bat) in which write following commands
jre_1.7.0 -> this will install jre on user's pc
set path="C\Program Files\Java\jre_1.7.0\bin"
java -jar yourAppName.jar
Why i installed JRE because different people have different JRE versions installed. So this makes it difficult to set path to the installed JRE's bin folder & calling the 'java -jar' command. Hence as you know which folders your JRE installation will create hence it is easy to set path and execute your jar file with 'java-jar' command.
Check that your jar file has the following structure (at least)
jarfile.jar
|---------- swong
|---------- Startup.class
|---------- META-INF
|---------- MANIFEST.MF
It seems like the class "Startup" is missing. Maybe your jar only contains the .java files, not the compiled classes.
This error message can be a mistakable java7 error, when you try to start java7 compiled classes with a different Java Runtime Environment then java7. Have you validated, that your .jar is started within a Java7 environment on those other test machines? Sometimes it happens, that you have installed different versions of JREs and you might not be sure which one is actually started.
To check which enviroment is used, you can check in your registry for the following value:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\jarfile\shell\open\command
this should point to your latest JRE. Or if you'd like to stay compatible to java6 as well, define the appropiate compile level in your build environment.