[izpack-devel] Self-Extracting and Self Running Jars -- Anyone Want Info On Them?

[Hal Vaughan]

The program I'm using IzPack for is for Windows and Linux only.  Since 
it's the first experience my clients will have with my company, my 
services, and my software, I want it to be as effortless, easy, and 
idiot-proof as possible.  I've found that, for people on some operating 
systems, even telling them "right click, pick 'run with' and pick Java" 
can be a pain because they're not used to context menus or thinking 
about what they do on computers.

I found out how to create self-installing archives for both Linux and 
Windows.  The Linux archives are easy to make and basically involve 
using "cat" to add the archive to a bash script and later "tail" from 
within the script to extract the archive.  It's a bit more complex on 
Windows and requires 7-Zip, which is also open-source and the developer 
was quick to respond to my questions.  The method for making Linux 
self-extracting archives should work on any Unix system that uses bash 
and I would think it would work on any Mac with OSX on it, since it 
uses only script commands and no natively compiled code.

When clicked on or run, these archives will automatically self-extract 
and run a specified program (in this case, I have it run "java -jar 
Install.jar") and clean up the temp files when done.  As usual, this 
script won't run directly from a CD in Linux unless "sh" is used to run 
it (which also means running it from a browser often won't work).  
However, I think it's about as much as can be done to make a jar file 
idiot proof, since a programmer or program distributor has no control 
over how the MIME types are defined on someone else's computer.

The draw back is that IzPack is multiplatform and these archives are 
platform dependent.  However, the same IzPack Install.jar can be used 
to create self-extracting and self-running archives for all different 
platforms.  I have a script set up that will use two of these archives 
to install Java, then run my IzPack install.  On a web install, only 
the first jar needs to be self-extracting.  All the pack jars can be 
left as they are.

Is there any interest in this among other programmers?  I am not at a 
point where I can actually integrate this into the compile process 
because I have some other work that has to be done, but I will be glad 
to post all the instructions and links I have on it and work with 
anyone who wants to either standardize into a script or two so it's 
easy to do or who wants to do some of the programming.

At the very least, I can write it up as documentation for IzPack as "How 
to Make Your Archives Self-Extracting and Self-Running".

I'm not going to do it, though, if there's no interest.

Any comments?

Hal