如何为Windows PC部署Java应用

Question

I have studied Java Web Start and found it complex and clumsy for my purposes. In addition, my app needs to access the PC resources, which causes more hoops to be jumped through with Java Web Start. To add to the difficulties I need to access a 32-bit native library (libvlc) so I need to insure that my app runs under 32-bit Java. Is there an easy way to deploy my app without resorting to Java Web Start? Needless to say, I want everything to be contained in a single .exe file.

Answer 1

I would start by searching the Internet for keywords such as " java 2 exe " and " jar to exe ", etc. Doing so yields many freely available software packages that convert Java programs into Windows executables, for example:

• JexePack - http://www.duckware.com/jexepack/index.html
• JarToExe - http://www.regexlab.com/en/jar2exe/
• JSmooth - http://jsmooth.sourceforge.net/

And the list goes on. Perhaps one of them meets your needs?

Answer 2

I am answering my own question to help people understand how to do this, which has taken me some number of days to figure out.

My initial problem was that my app would run on some versions of Windows but on others it was having problems finding the libvlc native library. I finally figured out that my app must run with 32-bit Java in order to use the 32-bit native library. Thus, the problem then became how to insure that the user started my app with 32-bit Java.

I read about Jar2Exe ( http://www.regexlab.com/en/jar2exe/ ) in another post and decided to check it out. It is a great little program that is very configurable so I figured that it must be able to handle my 32-bit Java problem. In fact, it does so without even needing to do any configuration. The resulting .exe file contains my app along with all the required jar files and starts up with the 32-bit Java. I am very pleased with this program and plan to buy a license, which is very cheap.

Hope this saves time for other people who are trying to solve a similar problem.