Overview

This plugin will transform your application into an optimized native executable for the platform on which you run Gradle, and place it into a separate directory together with all required Excelsior JET runtime files. In addition, it can either pack that directory into a zip archive (all platforms), create an Excelsior Installer setup (Windows and Linux only), or create an OS X application bundle/installer.

The current version of the plugin can handle four types of applications:

• Plain Java SE applications, i.e. applications that have a main class and have all their dependencies explicitly listed in the JVM classpath at launch time, and

• Spring Boot applications, packaged into Spring Boot executable jar or war files.

• Tomcat Web applications — .war files that can be deployed to the Apache Tomcat application server.

• Invocation Dynamic Libraries (e.g. Windows DLLs) callable from non-JVM languages via the Invocation API

• Windows Services, special long-running processes that may be launched during operating system bootstrap and use the Excelsior JET WinService API (Windows only)

In other words, if your application can be launched using a command line of the following form:

java -cp [dependencies-list] [main class]

and loads classes mostly from jars that are present in the dependencies-list, or if it is packaged into a .war file that can be deployed to a Tomcat application server instance, then you can use this plugin. Invocation Dynamic Libraries and Windows Services are essentially special build modes of plain Java SE applications that yield different executable types: dynamic libraries or Windows services.

Missing Functionality

The current plugin version supports almost all features accessible through the Excelsior JET GUIs (JET Control Panel and JetPackII). The only bits of functionality that are missing are as follows:

• Eclipse RCP support. The problem here is that there is no official Gradle plugin for building Eclipse RCP applications. Even the Eclipse Tycho Maven Plugin that enables exporting Eclipse RCP applications from Maven is still in incubation phase. If a standard way to build Eclipse RCP applications from Gradle ever appears, and there will be enough demand, we will support it in the Excelsior JET Gradle plugin.

• Application update packaging - because we plan to overhaul that feature completely in the mid-term future. Once it becomes clear how the new update process will look like, we will surely support it in the plugin. However, if the absence of that functionality is a show-stopper for you, please let us know and we'll reprioritize.

• Customization of Excelsior Installer wizard texts. Custom texts should be supplied in all languages that Excelsior Installer supports, and we have not yet found an easy-to-use way to configure them from the plugin.

If you find that some other functionality is also missing, or you need the plugin to support an additional feature sooner rather than later, you can help us prioritize the roadmap by creating a feature request here.