* Executor How-To *

Quick Start:

Drag and drop your jar onto executor.  (Or from the command line, pass your jar as the first argument to executor.)  An exe file will be created in the same directory as your jar file.

When your application launches, Executor will scan the jar and use the first class it finds with a static main(String[]) method.

Basic Options:

To specify a class to invoke, and to avoid the scanning at startup, add a "Main-Class" attribute to your jar's manifest.  (This is commonly known as making your jar "executable" -- it can now be launched with java's -jar option.)

To specify additions to your application's class path, add a "Class-Path" attribute to your jar's manifest.

There is an example of this on the website: <http://mpowers.net/executor>

Advanced Options:

You may further customize your executable's runtime behavior by editing the resources on the executable file.  

Any Windows resource editor will do; a number of users have had good experiences with a freeware program called "Resource Hacker", available at: <http://www.users.on.net/johnson/resourcehacker/reshack.zip>

To change the icon, simply edit any or all of the icon resources.

To change the runtime options, edit the string resources.  In particular, you can control the following options (which are also documented in the string resource itself):

You can specify the location of a jvm.dll with which to run your application.  If this option is unspecified, Exectuor's default behavior is to consult the registry and invoke the jvm found there.

You can specify the minimum version of Java your application will support.  By default this is 1.2, since Executor itself requires Java 2 to run.  

You can specify the maximum version of Java your application will support.  By default this is unspecified.

You can specify arguments to be passed to the jvm when it is created.  By default this is unspecified.  Use this option to set system properties or pass any parameters you would ordinarily pass to java.exe.

You can specify parameters to be passed to your application's main method before the user's command line parameters.  By default none are specified.

You can specify parameters to be passed to your application's main method after the user's command line parameters.  By default none are specified.

You can customize the message displayed to the user when no jvm is found.  By default, it reads: "This program requires the Java Runtime Environment. \nPlease download at http://java.sun.com/getjava\n".

You can customize the message displayed to the user when the machine's jvm is either less than or greater then your minimum or maximum required versions respectively.  By default, it reads: "This program is not compatible with Java version %s.\nPlease download from http://java.sun.com/getjava\n".

For all the string resources, the last # (pound) and all characters after it are ignored.  This allows you to embed comments into the options you specify.

For those string resources that allow multiple entries, separate your entries by the newline character.  How the newline character is generated will vary depending on your resource editor.

To automate the process of creating and editing resources, you can make a copy of the Executor program and modify the resources directly on that copy.  Executor always copies its resources to the generated executable.

For other questions, please see the website: <http://mpowers.net/executor>.

Thanks for using Executor!