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Groovy Native Launcher

What it is

This is a native launcher for Groovy, i.e. here you can find C sources and build files to build a native executable to launch Groovy scripts, much the same way Java binary is used to launch Java programs.

The Groovy Native Launcher was created by Antti Karanta (Antti dot Karanta (at) hornankuusi dot fi)

Design principles

For maximum portability, the source is written in ANSI-C using POSIX functions. Anything that can be done using these is done so without using external libraries / extensions.

Also, C99 features (although cool and useful) have not been used as they are not supported by ms cl compiler (visual c++).

The launcher has been built in such a way that only groovy.c has groovy dependent stuff. It is simple to use the other source files to create a native laucher for any Java program. In fact, native launchers for gant and grails have later been added.

Great care has been taken to avoid possibility of buffer overflows. The common c-convention of using "big enough" buffer is avoided if at all possible - instead memory is allocated dynamically after calculating how much is needed. The only exception to this rule is places where the posix or os specific API used must be called with a preallocated buffer, e.g. realpath function.

Licencing

The sources are provided with Apache 2 licence as that was thought to be liberal enough so that these can be used for any purpose commercial or open source. If you are for some reason restricted by that licence, please contact the author and we’ll work it out - the purpose is for these sources to be as widely usable as possible.

Porting to currently unsupported operating systems

Currently the implementation of the following things are platform dependent:

  • how a dynamic library is loaded.

  • If your system has dlfcn.h (like linux, solaris and os-x), this works out of the box

  • directory handling (jst_fileutils.c).

  • If your system has dirent.h this works out of the box.

  • location and name of jvm dynamic library (jvmstarter.c)

  • getting the location of the current process' executable (jst_fileutils.c)

  • supporting platform peculiarities like looking up java home from windows registry and using the standard Java installation location on os-x

Java launcher generator

This directory (and subdirectories) also contains a work in progress: a code generator to generate c sources and build files for a native launcher for any java app.

Ruby was chosen as the implementation language to avoid any bootstrap issues, and due to its great yaml support.

There are other similar projects/products. Here are the ones that I’m aware of and why we need yet another one:

Product Website Why this is not sufficient Notes

Launch4J http://launch4j.sourceforge.net Only generates windows executables Janel http://www.redskaper.com/Janel.jsp Only generates windows executables Caphyon http://www.advancedinstaller.com/java.html commercial + win & os-x support only Generates an installer, the native launcher is just one feature Java launcher included in the src.zip of a jdk Licence does not permit the creation of custom launchers (TODO: check if openJDK has changed this situation). See e.g. http://www.ociweb.com/jnb/jnbJul2004.html exe4j http://www.ej-technologies.com/products/exe4j/overview.html commercial, windows only JEXECreator http://www.ucware.com/jexec commercial, windows only JEXEPack http://www.duckware.com/jexepack/index.html commercial, windows only

TODO

  • refactor parameter classification into separate functions, possibly a separate source file options:

    • value into system property

    • value to classpath (a sysprop, yes, but needs to be handled separaterly)

    • value used as java home

    • map to another launchee param (single or double)

    • if not set,

  • use the value of an env var

  • use hard coded default (can refer to install dir by ${app_home}.

  • leave out

  • what about the other way around, i.e. specifying that a sys prop / launchee param is to be created using a param value / env var value / hard coded default value?

  • add the possibility to define "recursive jar dirs", i.e. directories where jars are searched for recursively.

  • the terminating suffixes is really only necessary in case where the name of the input file begins w/ "-". Maybe it is such a special case that it can be ignored? In that case the terminating suffixes part could be removed.

  • add an option to restrict which vendor’s java implementations are used

  • very low priority

  • add an option to restrict the used jre/jdk version to be exactly something, greater than something, between some values etc. Have a look at how eclipse plugins define the required version of their dependant plugins in their manifest.mf A problem that needs to be solved: how to reliably tell the version of a java impl without actually loading and starting the jvm?

  • Write some instructions on creating an .ico file for windows. Point to e.g. http://imageauthor.com and some win programs for icon creation.