Tadek’s Blog

Recently, I found out that Java the program I wrote ages ago has been alive and kicking and, even more, distributed as a single EXE with an install program. I was a bit surprised, as the last stage I left it it, was only a JAR file (with no sources available)

Looking a bit into it I found out how it can be easily done, which may be useful one day. Not that I want to write Windows programs, but…

* The installation can be done using [Install Creator](http://www.clickteam.com/English/install_creator.htm). The freeware version displays a small ad at the end of the process, but otherwise is free and looks ok.
* For the Java-to-EXE conversion there’s a nice [comparison and discussion](http://www.excelsior-usa.com/articles/java-to-exe.html). In this particular case they used [exe4j](http://www.ej-technologies.com/products/exe4j/overview.html), which is commercial, but there’s a number of other free tools around.

All in all, I must admit they did a good job making my program more user friendly and easier to use. It’s probably a good idea if your target users use a Windows platform (my original program is portable, but I’ve never seen anyone use it on anything but Windows)…

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 22nd, 2005 at 11:50 am and is filed under Personal, Progs/Tools/Libs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.