I want to created a JAR file and I want to run it on a client machine.So, I have a couple of questions:
How can I convert the JAR file to an EXE file?
How can I encrypt the JAR file's contents? The jar file could be extracted with WinRAR and the classes could be decompiled with any Java decompiler.
How can I create an installer? My clients doesn't have any JVM and I don't want to ship JDK or JRE along, because they have big size.
See this link: Java to Exe. It also explains what valid reasons are to do this, and when you should not.
You can't really encrypt binaries as the machine has to understand them. That said, an optimized executable is very difficult to decompile, while plain class files are ease.
If you have an exe there are installers enough.
JSmooth is a application which will wrap your Jar in an exe
it also allows you to check if the correct version of JRE is available on the system you're deploying to
http://jsmooth.sourceforge.net/
As for 1): I guess you can not. There may be tools out there, but you cannot do that with standard tools shipped with JDK, as it would destroy platform independance. (See other answers providing links to such 3rd party tools)
As for 3): Use InnoSetup to create the installer. Include JRE within setup and let InnoSetup install it on the fly.
You can't prevent decompilation. The best you can do is make it harder or more time-consuming to do so. As an answer to your question though, I believe you can use gcj to compile Java into EXEs.
May be Excelsior JET will satisfy your needs.) IMHO very mature product.
1) I have recently tried the program jarToExe and like it.
Some features are:
free basic version or very cheap ($30) for 'enterprise'
ability to have windows task manager list your app's name instead of the default java.exe
extra obfuscation
runtime check that java is installed
2) You can make it harder to reverse engineer using proguard or other obfuscator
3) nsis is a very powerful, free scripting language to create windows installers. Good documentation on the site wiki and support on stack overflow as well.
Launch4j worked for me while some tools hadn't been working. It also have a good guide here.
Hope this help!
We use a 7zip SFX install launcher. This is an open source simple tool. It will package your jar, a version of jre so it's not mandatory for the installing systems to have jre installed and a self extracting version of 7zip. Here is a tutorial which explains how to bundle and GitHub link
The project is not maintained but works perfectly(tested until Java 1.8)
1) To create the exe, you can use Launch4j
2) As I have seen, you cannot encrypt the jar contents. I'm not sure though.
3) To create the installer you can use the exe you just created and use InnoSetup to create the files. You have to embed the jre inside the installer and also any other libraries and extra files that may need in the runtime. When embedding the jre, the setup gets large and if you want to avoid that, you can ask the clients to install java in the machines. That way, you wont need to ship with the jre.
Related
I want to make a portable javafx application with JRE inside for Windows systems. I can make a jar and I aware about javapackage tool, but I can't find a simple way to create a portable application and wrap it in exe.
You could use Inno Setup for it, it's really simple. And even integrated if you are under Eclipse
I found all the informations about how to use it here
http://code.makery.ch/library/javafx-8-tutorial/part7/
Basically, you download it from http://www.jrsoftware.org/isdl.php and install it. Then you just need to set its path in your environment variables so that eclipse knows how to run it
How can I send my java application to a friend without having to send the entire project and being dependent on him having JDK? I'm aware of the .jar-file's existence, but I don't know how to proceed. I would like to be able to just send him the .jar-file or an executable file.
Any ideas?
Compile it to native code using a compiler such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Compiler_for_Java
Also, he doesn't need the JDK, just the JRE.
Did what #Barranka said regarding the dist folder, didn't know that worked until I read the readme file as #Barranka suggested.
So to quote what #Barranka said:
If you work with NetBeans, when you "build" your project, a dist
folder is generated, and your "packed" app is stored there. You can
send the contents of this folder. Read the "readme" file in that
folder. – Barranka
You can send the JAR file alone provided your program does not depend on other libraries. Assuming that there is a main() method and Main Class is configured in the JAR's manifest, the person can run it by Double Clicking (on windows) or use the command line
java -jar <jar_file_name>.jar
You cannot execute a Java application without a Java Virtual Machine, so you need one.
Your friend has to download a JRE/JDK, or you can provide it with your application directly as it (the JRE and your project in an archive) or provide it as a native compile code using GCJ or Excelsior Jet which will compile your application and a JRE.
As you can see the is no solution for your question, but there is one for your problem : ask your friend to download a JRE.
I'm trying to deploy an application using macdeployqt. All Qt frameworks get copied correctly into the application bundle. The problem I encounter is that macdeployqt does not have write permissions on the copied frameworks which originally reside in /usr/local/lib. This is because I have installed qt using homebrew which seems to make install everything read only. My question is whether there is a better way to fix this issue then manually changing all permissions of the qt libraries inside /usr/local/lib so that I can use macdeployqt from within a qt .pro project. (I don't want to use macdeployqt manually with sudo or such)
The reason why I'm asking is because I am using many third party libraries in the project (they get copied ok etc.) which I need to update often through homebrew and thus have to redo the permission changing on them.
Thanks in advance!
Just in case someone finds this old post looking for info about macdeployqt:
Use a script to do macdeployqt in preference to scripting the macdeployqt commands in your .pro file. That will allow you to change the permissions on the files on the fly.
Here is [a snippet of] the script I use for one of my apps:
https://bugreports.qt-project.org/browse/QTBUG-23268
If you're on Windows and don't have bash, you can use perl or python. The script referenced above modifies the files on the fly to work around a bug - you can put anything you want here, including changing the permissions on the files.
Using a script also means that you have the flexibility to add commands later to do code-signing, packaging or whatever else you need.
The Qt .pro "scripting language" actually generates Makefile commands under the hood and can be quite obscure if you want to accomplish deployment tasks that relate to paths and sets of files.
Also you'll need to create an extra target or include it into your build target - either way the build process becomes more complex and more error prone.
Disclaimer: I worked on Qt for 8 years as a Senior Engineer for Nokia/Trolltech, and also have published a commercial cross-platform app using Qt.
I've got a Qt app that I need installed on a customers computer, which I can't assume has Qt installed on it. I'm on a Mac OSX and the computer I will be installing it on some Unix based system. I will be installing it myself so I don't need a GUI installation wizard or anything like that. Ideally I'd like to end up with a script or makefile, along with a folder of all the sources and necessary libraries, I just don't know where to start. References would be much appreciated, I haven't found anything useful after many google searches.
My question lies somewhere between these two:
Can you create a setup.exe in qt to install your app on a client computer?
Create Linux install for Qt application?
I don't need a full-blown install wizard (question 1), but I also won't have my machine at the installation site to just keep copying libraries until all dependencies are met (question 2). Basically I need to have everything on a CD ready to install when I get there. Thanks in advance.
There are two ways to install a Qt application on a system:
1 - You can compile Qt statically. This will allow you to deploy you app without any qt dependencies.
2 - You need to deploy your app with Qt librairy files you need (like qtcore.dll on Windows)
You will find all explications for each platform in the Qt documentation : http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/deployment.html.
To create installer you can use InstallJammer for Windows and Unix.
For MacOSX you need to create a dmg image. This is very simple. Read the following web page for help : http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-DMG-File-on-a-Mac. By using apple script you can customize dmg (like an Application folder link into the dmg).
My preference for Win32 installer is NSIS.
Hope that helps!
Not sure why you want to avoid the install wizard. It can also help you create Uninstaller, desktop and start menu shortcuts, etc. As mentioned in the posts you refer to, you could use BitRock InstallBuilder (Nokia uses it for Qt Creator)
If you do not want to use a wizard and don't want to compile statically, then you can bundle Qt libraries in the same folder as the app and setup a shell script that sets the LD_LIBRARY_PATH to that directory
Whats the best way to deploy a QT app? I've read the documentation hosted at trolltech but is it better to link with a static library or the dynamic libraries and have the user install the framework? I don't really want anyone using my app to have to download a 160mb framework just to run a simple gui frontend.
On OS X it's a good way to do a dynamic build and post-process the resulting ".app" with the macdeployqt tool which comes with Qt starting with 4.5.
This will copy the Qt frameworks used by your application into the application bundle, which results in a larger package than building a static version of your application.
Here is what you can do to make sure you get the smallest file size possibly in a dynamic build:
First off, make sure you only include the stuff you need (in the project.pro file's QT += core gui network xml lines).
Open the application bundle and remove any unneeded "Qt Plugins" from the bundle. macdeployqt automatically compies all the Qt plugins in there, which can be kind of bulky.
Make sure you are building your application in release mode. Otherwise your application might be linked against the debug libraries of the Qt4 framework, and they are really big (for instance, well over 90 MB for the debug library vs. 16 MB of a release variant without debugging symbols). This might be what happened in your case.
If you have a large application binary, you can use UPX to compress your executable file by 40-50%.
Other than that, you should use compressed disk images to deploy your application.
One of my projects uses QtGui, QtNetwork, QtCore and QtXml and the resulting bundle is about 16 MB in size.
Hope that helps.
Unfortunately you will have to include the Qt libraries you need into your own bundle, as you cannot expect your users to have Qt installed on Mac (whereas on Linux packaging systems allow you to require at least a given version of Qt.
There is a nice tool to help you with that, which is called macdeployqt. You just need to invoke it on your bundle application and it will pack the required libraries, changing the linkage of your binary to refer to them. Without it, making bundles for Mac is a real pain (it still is, but considerably less though).
http://doc.trolltech.com/4.6/deployment-mac.html#the-mac-deployment-tool
Afterwards, you can make a .dmg image as you would do with any other app. There is an option in macdeployqt that builds a basic one.
On Linux, it's better to rely on the OS's copy of Qt, as it's almost certainly installed - for OS X, almost all apps use a statically compiled library.