The problem:

• Your game requires external files that have to be outside the jar
• Your game requires native libraries
• Your game requires OS-specific code
• Your game requires command line arguments
• You still want to deploy as a single jar file

The solution: SvgExe!



SvgExe is a tool that helps you create standalone, self-extracting jar files that automatically deploy external files and native libraries for the correct system. It has a step-by-step GUI for developers and cleans up after itself automatically, so your users never have to worry about more than one file.

I created this mostly to be used by Processing developers after Processing stopped supporting exporting applications for multiple systems, but I figured some Java developers might find a use for it as well, especially with the Java 7u51 "security fix" for applets and webstarts. I have an example tutorial that uses SvgExe to deploy a LWJGL game here.

SvgExe is also open-source on GitHub, and it might make a perfect jumping-on point for people who want to get into open-source development on a smaller project.

It's similar to JarSplice, except it allows more customization and supports external files.

In fact, I came up with this specifically because JarSplice didn't support external files (which Processing relies on), then I just kept adding features to support every corner case I could think of.

It's also open source and actively developed, which I'm not sure is true of JarSplice?

Doesn't JOGL handle its natives automatically?

But if you really want a JOGL example, that would be really easy to put together!

Hehe, that was me asking that question! I was trying to figure out the best way to package up a Processing application (which uses JOGL), and SvgExe is what I eventually came up with. The way JOGL does it was one of my inspirations for the tool!

Putting together a JOGL example should be really similar to the LWJGL example that already exists, so it should be pretty easy. I just have to find a little example JOGL project first...

The name 'SvgExe' is a tad unfortunate, given that SVG commonly stands for 'Scalable Vector Graphics' .

For that reason I ignored this thread (I never work with SVG files), and only discovered what it was about when you plugged it in another thread.

You released it yesterday... how can it be too late?

This isn't the first place I released it. But I'll think about it.

Planning on getting a JOGL example up tonight!

As far as names go, SVG confuses with the graphics, and EXE smells of Windows-only.

Maybe JarPkg? (Have a whole game and resources packaged into a jar)

The LWJGL mention was completely accidental, just because I copied and pasted the LWJGL tutorial to create the JOGL tutorial because the process is almost identical. Fixed now!

I went with a directory layout that's slightly different to give the user more freedom- now the architecture part of it is optional, and you can only use the top-level OS directories if you want. This was in response to a user request to be able to ignore the architecture level and only use the OS level, and it seems to work pretty well. I've tried to make the tool as general as possible instead of appealing directly to any one library.

The mention of LWJGL is gone (just a copy paste accident!), and the only reason it's on the bottom is because it's the last one I added! I can rearrange it if it's really a big deal, or heck, I could even give each a 50% chance to be on top every time the page is loaded, hahaha.

Thanks for taking a look at it, I'm pretty excited to be mentioned on the JOGL site!

PS- Should I be calling it JOGL or JogAmp? The tutorial only uses JOGL, but I've seen both...

PPS- I think I'm keeping the name, but I'll be sure to add what it does in parenthesis or something whenever I introduce it, just like I did in the title here. Hopefully that makes it obvious enough. :p  It's already gained some traction on the Processing forum, which I think will be its main use.

Awesome, thanks!


Fixed! I need a proofreader like you on every page on the site...