jpackage EA Build Question Followup

Thu May 30 13:40:41 UTC 2019

Hi,

I had sent in a question in January about the jpackage (see below link and email). Due to issues with our email filtering service I did not see the response and wandered upon it last night. So apologies in advance for such a long time between messages, I am now a subscriber and hopefully the email filtering issue is fixed properly by IT.

I'm experimenting with build 49 of jpackage in the JDK 13 EA. I'm still not sure if what I want to do is currently possible. I would like to execute "jpackage create-app-image" with all my info for a non-modular application image (input, output, name, icon, jar, main class). I would then like to move the cfg and jar up one directory so that the applauncher.dll, cfg, exe, ico and jar are all in the same folder. Then rename the cfg and exe, we have a standard exe name that I don't want to be used by windows as the app name (this all works fine as is as long as the cfg and exe names match). If I'm able to reorder the generated files from create-app-image, I can install our native 64 bit C++ apps in the same folder and share the 64 bit dll's between all the C++ and Java applications. Lots of moving parts, hopefully the layout is clear in my initial message, I've had a hell of a time explaining this to my coworkers.

One thing I wanted to clarify from the previous thread is that we do not use the installer portion of javapackager, we use a different installer, with javapackager we just use the "-native image" option. I would like to also note that we have a fairly large install which has about 50 executables that are installed, including 6 java applications, so minimizing duplication helps save space and install time.

We are also in the process of porting several dozen more of these applications to 64 bit which makes that issue a little more important to sort out.

Previous thread: https://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/core-libs-dev/2019-January/057775.html

Thanks again for any help, much appreciated!

interesting ...

I would think I would want to do this by first building the app image,

then moving the pieces around before building the installer.

But that doesn't work:

1.) the installer expects to find a "runtime" sub-directory of the

app-image directory.  This could be considered a bug, and I will fix it,

but it can be worked around by creating an extra empty "runtime" subdir

in the app image.

2.) the installer needs to find the app itself (for installing shortcuts

to it).  When using an app-image it determines the app name by looking

for a cfg file in the "app" sub-directory of the app-image.  Then given

the name, it looks for executable and ico of that name in the top level

app-image directory.

I suspect I could work around even that by using drop-in resources with

the new --resource-dir arg but not sure.  I will look into it and get

back to you. (this is significantly different since JDK-8215515

<https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8215515> , so even if I can

work around this in that way - you would have to wait for the next EA drop).

The bigger question is should there be some way to express the install

root differently from the app root ?

/Andy

Original Email Below
--------------------------------

We are currently using JDK 10 with javapackager and have looked at the Early Access build available for the jpackage enhancement. We have a question about an issue we are currently experiencing with javapackager, which appears to have the same behavior in jpackage.

Background:

In our install we have several 32 bit C++ applications, some 64 bit C++ applications and 64 bit JDK 10 Java applications. The 64 bit C++ and Java applications both use a set of C++ DLLs. This has forced us to place the 64 bit C++ applications in the app folder that the javapackager creates. Jpackage appears to create the same app folder.

Our folder structure is outlined below. The executable generated by javapackager appears to be hardcoded to use the app/*.cfg files. We would like the ability to place the contents of the app folder directly in our bin64 folder along with the exe and ico that are generated.

Install / bin64 / app / native64.dll
Install / bin64 / app / cpp64bitapp.exe
Install / bin64 / app / javaapp.jar
Install / bin64 / app / javaapp.cfg
Install / bin64 / javaapp.exe
Install / bin64 / runtime <-- JRE 10 runtime
Install / native.dll
Install / cpp32bitapp.exe

Question:
Is it possible for us to rename or change the app folder, or to place the contents of the app folder in the parent directory?

Andrew Auclair
Software Engineer
Tactical Communications Group
A Curtiss-Wright Company
2 Highwood Drive, Building 2, Suite 200
Tewksbury, MA  01876-1157

Direct: 978-654-4849   Fax: 978-654-4801
www.g2tcg.com<http://www.g2tcg.com/>