What is wrong with Jars?

General Discussions
#41

Wow… Some people are just slack (when I think about it)…
It is like what my dad says all the time: phones are getting smaller and smarter… People, not so much… (No offence to anybody)

Also, sry for so many questions:

  • if PackR does use icons, how do I choose one?
  • @gouessej, if your tool is apparently ‘better’, what is it and where is a tutorial?

Sry for so many questions, I’m just new to this…

#42

It’s difficult to achieve without signing your packages, you have to pay the tolls to get no scary popup or even nothing. Gatekeeper is very annoying under OS X.

You need an .ico file for Windows, a PNG file for GNU Linux and an .icns file for Mac OS X. Unlike PackR, my tool does the conversation, the developer has to provide only a PNG file.

It has some limitations:

  • when nativelauncherenabled is set to false, the window icon isn’t set
  • minimizejre is only supported when nativelauncherenabled is set to true
  • useserverjre is an hint; if there is no server JRE, Java will use the client JRE
  • nativelauncherenabled=false hasn’t been tested yet under Windows
  • MSI not implemented yet
  • you have to build OpenJFX by yourself if jdk is set to “” and if you need JavaFX
  • there is no mechanism to update the system JRE

There are some things that work:

  • Red Hat packages (fully tested, working)
  • Debian packages (not fully tested, the executable bit of Java and the script must be preserved)
  • archives similar to what PackR and JWrapper do (working)
  • zipped APP packages (fully tested, working, requires OS X 10.7.3 except if you rely on the system JRE by setting jdk to “”)

I will put the “library” into a separate file but probably not into a separate project because I want to focus on my game. Its source code is currently in the Ant build file of my game, in the pre-beta branch. It’s just a set of Ant macros and tasks, the source code is commented and each attribute has a definition. I will post something about it when it’s ready for prime time, probably without MSI support as it will take a lot of time to implement. You can still use a zipped JAR as a fallback even though it’s less convenient than a clean native application bundle. I’d like to avoid effort duplication but I assume that there will always be some developers who prefer wasting time in creating platform dependent tools or tools with a lot less features. Keep in mind that my source code is under GPL v2. I understand that it might refrain some developers to use it.

#43

Hi

I don’t want to “pollute” this thread, I have to clean a few things and I need some help to test my bundles. I’ll post some information about my tool at the bottom of this post in the thread of my main project when the move of the library into a separate script is done.