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> you unfortunately are semi-required to build platform specific bundles Can you elaborate on this? It seems like a build tool specific issue to me. In Clojure

> you unfortunately are semi-required to build platform specific bundles Can you elaborate on this? It seems like a build tool specific issue to me. In Clojure, most projects use Leiningen (a build tool) and uberjars regardless of the target Java version will bundle native libraries for every platform you run on. You can exclude some of the libraries from your uberjar, but it's a manual process. This has an obvious drawback (e.g. depending on the SQLite JDBC driver bloats your JAR with dozens of native libraries), but it's still very much "build once, run everywhere". The closest I've been to "platform specific bundles" was dealing with a Gradle project where the developer hard-coded a target platform into a property, thus making it impossible to bundle libraries for multiple platforms.

geokon 3y ago
Right, both lein and depstar (or whatever the latest deps.edn one is) make uberjars. And this works great on Linux - which I'm pretty sure is the dev platform for almost all Clojurists. Linux distros basically always come with a OpenJDK JRE/JVM. But installing a JRE is actually discouraged by the Java people. You will notice on java.com you can't actually download a Java 11/17/+ JRE. You can only get a Java 8 JRE! You're supposed to use `jpackage`. It basically packages up the uberjar with all the necessary pieces of the JRE to run the uberjar (so a pared down JRE) and does platform specific bundling like adding meta data and creating an installer (so your application can have a place to save settings and whatnot between runs, have an icon in the Start menu/desktop and stuff like that) You can still do uberjars and get a JRE for Windows/Mac from third parties like Adaptium, but it's very unergonomic and looks kinda sketch (b/c it doesn't look official) My own anecdotal experience: I distributed a JavaFX/Java-17 app as an uberjar. My rational was: - I didn't need any app persistence between runs, so I just wanted a small double-clickage ".exe/bin" equivalent that people could download and try out (no one wants install some random app to try out from online). - `jpackage` doesn't allow you to make a simple double-clickable .exe (they can make something confusingly called an appimgage, which is not an Linux appimage - but it's similar!) - I had no way to do testing on Mac b/c I don't own an Apple machine. So I don't wanna be generating Mac executables I can't even test.. At least with the uberjar I can be semi-confident if it runs on my laptop it'll run on a Mac later (sorta true) The end result was a disaster.. 90% of user issues were from people that would who would go to java.com, "install Java" (ending up with a Java 8 JRE!) and then the app would just silently not run. The JRE doesn't produce any friendly error or warning saying anything about versions - it just silently fails. I have in bold on my landing page YOU NEED A JAVA 17+ JRE. No use.. people would still do it wrong
- dtech 3y ago
  Yeah java isn't really used for Consumer apps and this is one of the reasons. The ones that do evade this problem by bundeling their own JVM.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    No, consumer java desktop applications were already uncommon when java 9 came out.
    - geokon 3y ago
      More broadly, non-Electron apps have been uncommon for a while. I just don't work in the webspace and I need to write code that's relatively performant b/c it involves some numbercrunching. I understand it's all possible with Electron.. but it's a bit daunting to have a client-server web stack and multiple languages with some stuff in a local backend.. It's all a bit beyond me JavaFX was a nice solution that's crossplatform and near-native. It has a very nice react-like library in Clojure called `cljfx` https://github.com/cljfx/cljfx/ https://github.com/cljfx/cljfx/
- WkndTriathlete 3y ago
  You're doing it wrong. Like way wrong. Use jlink. It creates a double-clickable .exe from your JDK installation, pared down to a JRE for distribution. Works on Linux and Windows.
  - geokon 3y ago
    could you give me a link on how it's done? I looked into this extensively and there was no way to bundle an .exe . It was a 2-3 years ago so maybe things have changed
    - lbalazscs 3y ago
      jlink only creates a runtime (the parts of the JDK that are actually used by your app), but there's a relatively new command called jpackage for creating installers: https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/21/jpackage/packaging-overview.html https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/21/jpackage/packaging... EDIT: I see now that you already know jpackage, but you don't want an installer. In that case you can use launch4j, which just wraps a jar in an exe: https://launch4j.sourceforge.net/ https://launch4j.sourceforge.net/

geokon 3y ago

Right, both lein and depstar (or whatever the latest deps.edn one is) make uberjars. And this works great on Linux - which I'm pretty sure is the dev platform for almost all Clojurists. Linux distros basically always come with a OpenJDK JRE/JVM. But installing a JRE is actually discouraged by the Java people. You will notice on java.com you can't actually download a Java 11/17/+ JRE. You can only get a Java 8 JRE! You're supposed to use `jpackage`. It basically packages up the uberjar with all the necessary pieces of the JRE to run the uberjar (so a pared down JRE) and does platform specific bundling like adding meta data and creating an installer (so your application can have a place to save settings and whatnot between runs, have an icon in the Start menu/desktop and stuff like that) You can still do uberjars and get a JRE for Windows/Mac from third parties like Adaptium, but it's very unergonomic and looks kinda sketch (b/c it doesn't look official) My own anecdotal experience: I distributed a JavaFX/Java-17 app as an uberjar. My rational was: - I didn't need any app persistence between runs, so I just wanted a small double-clickage ".exe/bin" equivalent that people could download and try out (no one wants install some random app to try out from online). - `jpackage` doesn't allow you to make a simple double-clickable .exe (they can make something confusingly called an appimgage, which is not an Linux appimage - but it's similar!) - I had no way to do testing on Mac b/c I don't own an Apple machine. So I don't wanna be generating Mac executables I can't even test.. At least with the uberjar I can be semi-confident if it runs on my laptop it'll run on a Mac later (sorta true) The end result was a disaster.. 90% of user issues were from people that would who would go to java.com, "install Java" (ending up with a Java 8 JRE!) and then the app would just silently not run. The JRE doesn't produce any friendly error or warning saying anything about versions - it just silently fails. I have in bold on my landing page YOU NEED A JAVA 17+ JRE. No use.. people would still do it wrong

dtech 3y ago
Yeah java isn't really used for Consumer apps and this is one of the reasons. The ones that do evade this problem by bundeling their own JVM.
- thfuran 3y ago
  No, consumer java desktop applications were already uncommon when java 9 came out.
  - geokon 3y ago
    More broadly, non-Electron apps have been uncommon for a while. I just don't work in the webspace and I need to write code that's relatively performant b/c it involves some numbercrunching. I understand it's all possible with Electron.. but it's a bit daunting to have a client-server web stack and multiple languages with some stuff in a local backend.. It's all a bit beyond me JavaFX was a nice solution that's crossplatform and near-native. It has a very nice react-like library in Clojure called `cljfx` https://github.com/cljfx/cljfx/ https://github.com/cljfx/cljfx/
WkndTriathlete 3y ago
You're doing it wrong. Like way wrong. Use jlink. It creates a double-clickable .exe from your JDK installation, pared down to a JRE for distribution. Works on Linux and Windows.
- geokon 3y ago
  could you give me a link on how it's done? I looked into this extensively and there was no way to bundle an .exe . It was a 2-3 years ago so maybe things have changed
  - lbalazscs 3y ago
    jlink only creates a runtime (the parts of the JDK that are actually used by your app), but there's a relatively new command called jpackage for creating installers: https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/21/jpackage/packaging-overview.html https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/21/jpackage/packaging... EDIT: I see now that you already know jpackage, but you don't want an installer. In that case you can use launch4j, which just wraps a jar in an exe: https://launch4j.sourceforge.net/ https://launch4j.sourceforge.net/