Java jar launcher for console only apps mac

Question

I want to bundle my .jar app to automatically run open on mac os. It has no GUI so it needs to be run from terminal to work but I need to give it to others who would rather not use terminal. How would I go about doing this? I tried the app builder that is seen here but it only shows up on activity monitor for a fraction of a second before going away. More info about my jar file: It was build in netbeans so it does have all the folders/xml needed to build a jar via ant. It needs a few additional libraries that are copied to the lib folder when netbeans builds the project. Thirdly it needs to store temp files in a folder called assets that is located in the same folder as the jar file is. I can change number 3 if need be.

Answer 1

Your issue doesn't really have much to do with running on the mac - the problem is that you're trying to run a console app without a console.

Here is an example of one way to provide a console in a GUI window, rather than running the app in an shell (the terminal).

Once you have that working, you can consider wrapping it in the Mac - specific deployment that you pointed to.

For portability's sake, you may also want to consider:

• Re-packaging your classes and all of the classes from your jar dependencies into one big "uber-jar" - there are several tools for doing this, including the Maven Assembly Plugin

• Storing your temporary files in the system's default temp file location (using File.createTempFile) instead of specifying exactly where they should be written.