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Jaunch: Launch Programs Your Way!™

Jaunch is a native launcher for applications that run inside non-native runtimes, including the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), the Python interpreter, or both.

Quick start

make app
app/hello

Documentation

License

To maximize the flexibility of downstream projects to use and adapt this code, Jaunch is Unlicensed. See the UNLICENSE file for details.

Why Jaunch

Do you have a desktop application that runs in the Python interpreter or Java Virtual Machine? You probably want a friendly native launcher, for example a .exe file in the case of Windows, that launches your program, right?

There are many existing ways for both Python and the JVM to achieve this goal; see Alternatives below. But none of them do what Jaunch does:

  • Discover existing runtime installations, rather than necessarily bundling one.
  • Provide supreme flexibility and configurability with program launch parameters.

Jaunch began as a tool to launch Fiji, a rather complex application for the JVM. But Fiji also needed the ability to be launched via Python (i.e. start Python which then starts Java using JPype), to make its in-process Python integration as convenient as possible for users to access. So we figured hey, Jaunch knows how to link to libpython now, so why not support standalone Python apps as well? We do not know of an existing general tool in the Python ecosystem that fills this niche of launching Python without necessarily bundling Python.

Design Goals

Run your program in the same process as the launcher

  • Be a good citizen of our native environment.
  • Integrate properly with application docks, system trays, and taskbars.

Discover runtime installations already on the system

  • Link to the best native library (libjvm and/or libpython) on demand.
  • Search beneath specified runtime directory roots.
  • Recognize system-wide installations as well as bundled runtimes.
  • Define rules for deciding which installations meet application requirements.
  • If no appropriate runtime installation is found, show an informative error message.

Support runtime customization of runtime launch parameters

  • Customize at runtime which arguments are passed to the runtime itself.
  • Customize at runtime which arguments are passed to the main class.
  • Customize at runtime which program (Java main class or Python script) is run.

Customize launcher behavior without recompiling native binaries

  • Editable TOML files let users customize launcher behavior, e.g. adding shortcuts for common command line operations.

Keep as much code in a high-level language as possible

  • Jaunch came into being to replace an aging launcher written as 5000+ lines of C code. The design centers around minimizing the size and complexity of needed C code, in favor of most code being written in a more maintainable high-level language.
  • On the off-chance that the TOML-based configuration is not flexible enough for your application's needs, your next layer of customization is the Kotlin codebase, not C.

Keep the binary size of the native launcher as small as possible

  • As few dependencies as possible—right now Jaunch has none at all besides standard platform libraries.
  • Where feasible, compress native binaries using upx.

Architecture

Jaunch consists of two parts:

  1. A native launcher, written in C, kept reasonably minimal.

  2. A "configurator" executable written in Kotlin Native, which does the heavy lifting.

The native launcher (1) will be named after your particular application, it is placed in the base directory of your application. For example, for an application called Fizzbuzz, the launcher could be named fizzbuzz.exe.

The configurator (2) is named jaunch-<os>-<arch>.exe, and placed in the jaunch subdirectory of your application. Examples: for ARM64 Linux it would be named jaunch/jaunch-linux-arm64, whereas for x86-64 Windows it would be named jaunch/jaunch-windows-x64.exe. The reason for the <os>-<arch> suffix is so that portable applications can ship with all needed jaunch configurator executables in the same jaunch folder, without any name clashes.

The native launcher invokes the configurator as a subprocess, passing its entire argv list to the appropriate jaunch program via a pipe to stdin. The jaunch configurator is then responsible for outputting the following things via its stdout:

  1. Number of lines of output.
  2. Directive for the native launcher to perform, or else an error message to display.
  3. A sequence of lines corresponding to the directive:
    • For the JVM:
      1. A path to jvm native library.

TODO: Update this explanation. It's different per directive now. 4. Number of arguments to the runtime (Python or JVM). 5. List of arguments to the runtime, one per line. 6. Main program to run.

  • For Python programs: path to Python script on the file system.
  • For JVM programs: Fully qualified main class name in slash-separated (not dot-separated) format.
  1. Number of arguments to the main program.
  2. List of main arguments, one per line.

To deliver this output, the configurator must do the following things:

  • Decide which runtime installation to use.
  • Decide which main program to run.
  • Decide how to transform the user arguments into runtime and/or main arguments.

If your application's needs along these lines are relatively minimal—e.g. if you bundle a JDK in a known location, and always pass all user arguments as main arguments—you would likely not even need Jaunch's Kotlin/configurator code at all; you could write your own simple jaunch configurator as a shell script and/or batch file.

However, Jaunch was designed to satisfy the needs of applications with more complex command line functionality, which is where the Kotlin configurator comes in. It reads declarative TOML configuration files, which define how Jaunch will make the above decisions. The TOML configuration is its own layer of the architecture, which is best learned by reading the common.toml file directly. With this design, the behavior of Jaunch can be heavily customized without needing to modify source code and rebuild. And for applications that need it, there can be multiple different native launchers in the application base directory that all share the same jaunch configurator native binaries with different TOML configurations.

Alternatives

As so often in technology, there are so many. And yet nothing that does what this program does!

Other Java launching approaches

Executable JAR file

  • Pros:
    • Simple: double-click the JAR.
  • Cons:
    • Needs OpenJDK already installed and registered to handle the .jar extension.
    • Encourages creation of uber-JARs over modular applications.
    • Does not integrate well with native OS application mechanisms.
    • Does not enable transformation of CLI arguments to JVM arguments.

jpackage

  • Pros:
  • Cons:
    • Imposes its opinions on the application directory structure (e.g. jars must go in libs folder).
    • Standalone executable launcher does not support passing JVM arguments (e.g. -Xmx5g to override max heap size).
    • Always bundles a Java runtime, rather than discovering existing Java installations.
  • Example:
    • The QuPath project uses jpackage for its launcher.
      • QuPath provides a configuration dialog to modify the Java maximum heap size, which it handles by editing the jpackage .cfg file on the user's behalf.

You can use jpackage to generate one for every platform you want to support: typically Linux, macOS, and Windows. The jpackage tool is part of the Java Development Kit (JDK), so you might think there is no need for another Java native launcher. But jpackage is inflexible:

  • The jpackage tool mandates a specific directory structure for your application, e.g. putting all JAR libraries in the lib/app folder, and the bundled Java runtime into lib/runtime. As far as I know, you can't use a different structure.

  • The native launchers generated by jpackage do not allow users to pass custom arguments to the JVM ("users can't provide JVM options to the application"). All arguments are handed verbatim to your Java application's main method. So if your users want to e.g. increase the maximum heap size by passing -Xmx20g, they must edit the jpackage .cfg file located in the application's /app directory.

  • The jpackage tool also provides no way to support options like --debugger=8000 which are transformed into JVM arguments like -agentlib:jdwp=transport=dt_socket,server=y,suspend=n,address=localhost:8000. To simulate that sort of thing with jpackage, you'd need to implement an option in your application's interface like "restart application in debug mode" with a port and a "suspend" checkbox. And you'd have to decide whether to reset that every time your application launches, or else require the user to go back into the options and disable the debug mode again for next time when they are finished.

  • jpackage apparently no longer supports generating an application without a bundled Java. It did once, back when it was the "JavaFX packager", but based on Internet searches and the docs, it seems they removed this feature. So you cannot have a "portable application" version of your program, runnable from a USB stick across multiple platforms, leveraging the current computer's system installation of Java.

  • jpackage has a feature to generate multiple launchers, each with its own arguments and main class, which is nice. But they end up as separate executables, so you cannot have an option like fizzbuzz --update that runs a different main class. (It would be doable on the Java side by having a main class that always gets run, which then delegates to another main class, but it's a hassle.) Whereas the design of Jaunch is flexible enough to support a --main-class option so that fizzbuzz --main-class org.example.AltClass will run AltClass rather than FizzBuzz's default main class.

  • On Windows, a jpackage launcher must be either a console application, or a non-console application. It cannot be both, contingent on how the user invokes it. Whereas Jaunch connects to the existing console when there is one, but does not create a new one.

All of that said, jpackage is a very nice tool, and if it works for you, use it! But if you want more flexibility—if you want to launch Java Your Way—then try Jaunch.

Call java in its own separate process

E.g., via shell scripts such as Contents/MacOS/JavaApplicationStub.

  • Pros:
    • Very flexible and easy to code.
  • Cons:
    • Needs OpenJDK already installed and available on the system PATH, and/or pointed at by JAVA_HOME, and/or known to /usr/libexec/java_home on macOS, /usr/bin/update-java-alternatives on Linux, etc. In a nutshell: you are doing your own discovery of OpenJDK installations.
  • Example:
    • The Icy project uses shell script launchers on macOS and Linux, and a mystery meat (AFAICT) .exe launcher on Windows.
      • For Linux, the java on the system path is used.
      • For macOS, the java given by /usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.8 is used.
      • In both cases, no arguments can be passed to the program (neither to the JVM nor to the Icy application).

Lean on command-line tools

E.g. SDKMAN!, cjdk, install-jdk, jgo.

  • Pros:
    • Leave it to dedicated external code to install and manage your JDKs.
  • Cons:
    • Unfriendly to require non-technical users to run terminal commands to launch a GUI-based application.

Use a general-purpose Java launcher

install4j by ej Technologies.

launch4j

  • Must choose console or GUI a priori for Windows flavor.
  • Still hosted on SourceForge.
  • Can customize JVM options at runtime, but only by editing the application's .l4j.ini file.

WinRun4J

Build your own native launcher for Java

JavaCall.jl

  • Written in Julia, permissively licensed.
  • Provides a general API for working with the JVM from Julia code.
  • Would need to build a native launcher on top of it.
  • Does not work on macOS anymore with Julia 1.6.3+.

hfhbd/jniTest

  • Written in Kotlin (Native/KMP application).
  • Proof of concept for loading libjvm to launch Java code from a Kotlin program.
  • Built binary is 518K.
  • Does not use dlopen/dlsym, but rather links to libjvm. See my post on Kotlin Discuss.
  • Also links to libpthread, unlike other native launchers on this list.

Example Java launchers

ImageJ Launcher

  • Written in C.
  • Built binary is 91K.
  • Supports custom runtime arguments to both ImageJ/Fiji and the JVM.
  • Sometimes needs to re-exec with execvp, either itself with changes to environment variables, or the system Java.

ijp-imagej-launcher

  • Written in Scala.
  • Built binary is 7.8M.
  • Links to libstdc++, unlike other native launchers on this list.
  • Calls java in a separate process.

Why (AstroImageJ)

  • Written in Rust.
  • Uses jni-rs crate, which leans on the intelligent Java discovery of java-locator.
  • Built binary is 51M.
  • Minimal dynamic library dependencies.
  • Project clearly targets Windows only; I had to modify the Cargo.toml and file_handler.rs in order to compile it for Linux.
  • No stated license.

Other Python launching approaches

PyInstaller

From the PyInstaller website:

PyInstaller bundles a Python application and all its dependencies into a single package. The user can run the packaged app without installing a Python interpreter or any modules.

Briefcase

From the Briefcase website:

Briefcase is a tool for converting a Python project into a standalone native application."

constructor

From the constructor website:

constructor is a tool which allows constructing an installer for a collection of conda packages.