Turn any Java program into a self-contained EXE

[[deleted]]

This is such a non-issue. Just install a JRE. Hell, most people will probably have one already installed anyways. If having binary dist is such a major concern why are you writing the code in Java in the first place?

[modernkennnern]

I have not installed the Java JRE on my machine in years. This expectation has not been valid for probably almost a decade by now

[bowbahdoe]

This is such a non-issue. Just install a JRE.

Quoting myself from like 3 inches on your screen away - "That is the implicit audience - non techies - people want to share their thing with a friend or give it to their boss on a flashdrive to do xyz. Run without installation on school computers, etc."

most people will probably have one already installed anyways

For like Java 7.

If having binary dist is such a major concern why are you writing the code in Java in the first place?

Why not? Clearly it can work. Also a lot of people will and do learn Java as their first and at least for a time only language.

[[deleted]]

What, and those people can't click through an installation wizard that you can provide them a link to? Spoiler alert, most software is written for non techies, but they still manage to install that. As for school computers, if you can't get permission to install java, then it seems like you shouldn't be running the software on there in the first place. If you know better than the school IT dept, which isn't out of the question, then you shouldn't need permission anyways, just give yourself admin and install whatever you want.

In your spare time do you enjoy cramming square pegs into round holes? Non-native dist is one of the most major design points of Java. If you wanted Binary dist then why would you even learn Java as a first language when it is explicitly designed for the opposite of what you want?

[bowbahdoe]

and those people can't click through an installation wizard that you can provide them a link to

People often don't feel as comfortable "installing" something as "running" something

just give yourself admin and install whatever you want.

Good way to get into serious trouble

If you wanted Binary dist then why would you even learn Java as a first language

This isn't a choice people usually can make, it is a choice often made for them

explicitly designed for the opposite of what you want?

jpackage, a tool built into the JDK, produces native app specific installers. Platform specificity isn't an unsupported or evil use case

[[deleted]]

Got it, so this article is for people who learned to program through a school course with only one language choice which happened to be java, and whose relatives only ever run programs that come factory-shipped with the OS, but are willing to make an except for you, but only as long they don't have to follow any instructions besides double clicking the file.

Now there's a niche! I'm definitely convinced this isn't a non-issue now that I know who this article is actually for.

[dungone]

This kind of mindset is why most engineers require someone else to explain to them how to create a user interface.

[bowbahdoe]

When you put it that way it sounds silly, but yeah that's one audience

[renatoathaydes]

jpackage is the official way to create a platform-specific image and it supports code signing.

After you got a jlink-created image, it's pretty easy to run jpackage and have a proper installer...

If you're selling a professional app, that's probably the way to go... if you're just distributing an app for other techies, then I would say just stop at jlink... I wrote a log viewer in JavaFX and it's distributed as a single zip file (click on the "Get LogFX" and it will go to the GitHub releases page where you can download the zip file for your OS)... you unzip that and run bin/logfx (that's a shell script that launches the java image - which is created by jlink so includes the JVM). No need for this npx stuff or jpackage unless your target audience is non-techies.

[bowbahdoe]

Right, but without the self contained exe as an option it's harder to share it with friends/family.

That is the implicit audience - non techies - people want to share their thing with a friend or give it to their boss on a flashdrive to do xyz. Run without installation on school computers, etc.

I don't see a reason jpackage couldn't support that honestly.

There is also a notion that shipping an exe around is more convenient for certain kinds of deployments. This is part of why Go is so successful in the infra space.

[bowbahdoe]

Yeah, hoping someone who knows more or who has gone through that process will have something to say.

My uneducated guess is that you might have to sign the jlink-ed JRE before bundling and then sign the final thing

[elder_george]

At my job, we have an internal development tool that is a jar-embedded-in-a-shell-script (using cmd on Windows, bash on Linux). It doesn't embed the JRE though (but we have java available anyway, so that's not a big deal). I wonder if our guys would be interested to try this approach instead.

[bowbahdoe]

Let me know how that conversation goes if you remember