I also use Launch4j to generate Windows executable wrappers for some of
my Java programs. It works very well.
Usually I repack my jars and all 3rd party libraries (such as Pivot)
together into one big jar, so that the resulting EXE is self-contained
and can be passed around without creating a ZIP file containing a lib/
folder. It simplifies installation: just put the EXE somewhere and
double click it, that's it.
Note that you can configure your Launch4j exe wrapper to search for a
Java runtime in various standard places (registry, $JAVA_HOME
environment variable etc.), and display an error dialog with a custom
message when a suitable runtime cannot be found. You can even configure
Launch4j to open a url to a JRE download location in case no runtime is
available.
Dirk.
Greg Brown wrote:
Hi all,
One item that has been on my to-do list for quite a while is creating an example that
shows how to package up a Pivot application as a "native" executable for
Windows and OS X. I finally got around to this today. You can see the results here:
http://ixnay.biz/deployment/deployment-example-windows.zip
http://ixnay.biz/deployment/deployment-example-osx.tar.gz
These archives contain a simple example application packaged as a Windows
executable and an OS X application bundle, respectively. There is also a web
version, suitable for deployment via a Java app server:
http://ixnay.biz/deployment/deployment-example.war
The build script I used to generate these files is here:
http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/pivot/trunk/deployment-example.xml
The script relies on two other open-source projects:
http://launch4j.sourceforge.net/index.html (BSD)
http://informagen.com/JarBundler/ (GPL)
You'll need to install these in order to generate the native apps. Note that
Launch4J is available for Windows, OS X, and Linux, but JarBundler only works
on OS X.
The source code for the sample application is here:
http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/pivot/trunk/examples/src/org/apache/pivot/examples/deployment/
Just thought I would share in case anyone finds it useful.
Greg
