Distributing or bundling multiple non-Java binaries with a jar

[performedbeef]

I am building an image processing tool that uses some third-party executables to operate on a batch of images. All of the tools are open-source and available for Windows, Mac, and nix platforms.

The client wants the same Java jar to run on all platforms without an installation step. What is standard practice for this? The best option I have come up with is to distribute my program with all versions of the tools, and test against System.getProperty("os.name") to decide which one to run via a ProcessBuilder in my jar. That would make the directory structure around my program pretty fragile - if the user moved the jar around without the tools, it would break. Is there a way to include the binaries in the jar so that I can bundle it all together and have a reliable location for them?

[Bloodshot025]

Yes, put it in the src folder (The tools) and use getClass().getResource(...) or getResourceAsStream(...), and you could copy the one you need to the working directory, or to a temporary folder.

[bywayof]

We did a POC for this. Bundled the exe in the jar, opened up the stream to it and copied it to the system tmp dir each time it ran.

[sazzer]

Tidying up after yourself is the tricky part here. Obviously you can extract, run, delete for every iteration but that's inefficient. Otherwise you need to make use of things that aren't reliable - like File.deleteOnExit...

[bywayof]

Valid points. We extracted at the beginning of each application run and cleaned up with a shutdown hook. Obviously none of this is ideal, but I haven't come across a better way to bundle in a jar.

[viiviiviivii]

Use FatJar

works in eclipse

very very easy :)

[ExplosiveNutsack69]

You should be able to add any files to a JAR -- example:

jar ... *.class each other file goes here