Launchcode

Launchcode is a native application launcher for Java based applications. It provides integration with target operating system and gives more native look and feel to Java-based GUI applications.

Launchcode provides binaries for the following operating systems and CPU architectures:

• Windows on Intel/AMD 64-bit CPUs
• Mac on Intel and ARM 64-bit CPUs
• Linux on Intel/AMD and ARM 64-bit CPUs

For Windows launchers, it is possible to embed icon into executable.

License

Backstage is released under Mozilla Public License 2.0. See LICENSE file for details.

Usage

Launchcode is packaged as Docker image and can be run on any platform where DOcker is supported. To generate launchers for all platforms, run the following command:

docker run -v ${PWD}:/workspace  ghcr.io/bitshifted/launchcode:<version> config-file.yaml [output-dir]

This command mounts the current directory into /workspace directory in container. Argument config-file.yaml is a configuration file for installers generation. It is assumed that configuration file is in a present directory.

Argument output-dir is the directory where generated launchers will be placed. This argument is optional. If not specified, default directory dist will be used.

Generated installers will be placed in dist directory inside the current directory. Contents of this directory will look like this:

dist
  |- launcher-linux-x64
  |- launcher-linux-aarch64
  |- launcher-mac-x64
  |- launcher-mac-aarch64
  |- launcher-win-x64.exe

Configuration file reference

This section outlines the available options for configuration. Configuration file is in YAML format. Example file is shown bellow:

common:
  jre-dir: runtime
  restart-code: 20
  jvm-options: -Xms=20m  -Xmx200m
  jvm-system-properties: |
    -Dsome.property=1 -Dfoo.bar=baz \
    -Danother.property=x
  splash-screen: splash-screen.png
  classpath: classpath/dir/*
  module-path: some-directory
  add-modules: |
    javafx.core javafx.graphics \
    javafx.fxml
  module: mymodule
  main-class: com.test.MainClass
linux:
  splash-screen: splash-linux.png
  jvm-options: -Xms=10m  -Xmx=300m
mac:
  jre-dir: Contents/runtime/jre
  module-path: Contents/runtime/modules
windows:
  icon: test-icon.ico
  jvm-system-properties: |
    -Dwindows.foo=1 -Dwindows.bar=baz

There are 4 top level sections, which basically have the same options.

• common - options for all platforms, unless overriden for specific platforms
• linux - overrides common options on Linux
• mac - overrides common options on Mac OS
• windows - overrides common options on WIndows

Configuration options:

• jre-dir - location of JRE directory. It is assumes that path is relative to application root directory (on Mac OS, relative to bundle root)
• restart-code - return code from Java application that will cause a restart. This is useful if you need to eg. restart after update
• jvm-options - options to pass to Java VM
• jvm-system-properties - system properties to pass to JVM
• splash-screen - splash screen option to pass to JVM (ie. --splash:image.png)
• classpath - application classpath
• module-path - application module path
• add-modules - list of modules to add to application
• module - module to launch. This options requires main-class to be specified, so it can ba passed in form mymodule/MyMainClass
• main-class - application main class
• jar - application JAR file
• arguments - list of arguments to pass to application
• icon - icon to embed in the launcher (applicable only on Windows)