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SETUP.md

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Using Jaunch as your application launcher

  1. Download and unpack the latest Jaunch release. The rest of this guide will assume you unpacked the Jaunch v1.0.0 release into your home directory at ~/jaunch-1.0.0.

  2. Alternately, you can build Jaunch from source. But if you want launchers for all supported platforms (Linux, macOS, and Windows), you will need to build Jaunch on all of them and combine the results. The release downloads include prebuilt binaries for all platforms.

  3. Fire up a POSIX-friendly shell like zsh or bash.

    • On Linux and macOS, the built-in Terminal app will do the trick.
    • On Windows, use Git Bash, which we recommend installing via Scoop.

  4. Create a directory to serve as your application's base directory. For example, if your application is called Fizzbuzz, you might do:

    mkdir Fizzbuzz

    The rest of this guide will assume your application is named Fizzbuzz; replace all such references with your actual application name and title.

  5. Create a fizzbuzz.toml file matching your app's launch requirements.

    • To gain an understanding of the various configuration options, read through ~/jaunch-1.0.0/jaunch/common.toml, and perhaps also python.toml and jvm.toml.

    • If you are in a hurry, check out some example app configurations here.

    • You may also find the Fiji project's configuration illuminating, since it exercises many of Jaunch's capabilities.

  6. Optionally, prepare an icon for your application in SVG format.

    • If you don't want to bother with an icon, you can leave off the --app-icon fizzbuzz.svg arguments in the following step.

    • If you want to use different icons for Linux, macOS, and/or Windows, you can use the --app-icon-linux, --app-icon-macos, and --app-icon-windows arguments, respectively. The --app-icon-macos override in particular is useful if you wish to abide by macOS's style of icons with rounded rectangle frames.

  7. Use Jaunch's app-generation script to copy Jaunch's various bits into the correct places within your application base directory:

    ~/jaunch-1.0.0/bin/appify.sh \
  --app-exe fizzbuzz \
  --app-icon fizzbuzz.svg \
  --app-id com.mycompany.fizzbuzz \
  --app-title Fizzbuzz \
  --jaunch-toml fizzbuzz.toml \
  --out-dir Fizzbuzz

    replacing com.mycompany with an appropriate reverse-domain-name prefix for your organization.

  8. Note any [WARNING]s that appear in the appify output.

    • In particular, you may need to install ImageMagick and png2icns for your app icon to be successfully converted to the proper OS-specific formats (ICNS for macOS; ICO for Windows), and Wine to successfully embed the ICO into the Windows EXEs if running appify on a non-Windows platform.

    • After installing any needed utilities, repeat the previous step.

  9. Copy your application code (Python scripts, Java JAR files, etc.) into the Fizzbuzz directory structure into locations of your choice. For example, Java JAR files might live in lib or jars.

  10. Test your application by executing the appropriate launcher in debug mode:

    • Linux: Fizzbuzz/fizzbuzz --debug
    • macOS: Fizzbuzz/Fizzbuzz.app/Contents/MacOS/fizzbuzz-macos --debug
    • Windows: .\Fizzbuzz\fizzbuzz-windows-x64-console.exe --debug

Congratulations! You have a working Jaunch launcher!

Or maybe you don't, in which case you can ask for help on the Jaunch issue tracker.

Next steps:

  1. Optionally, compress the launcher executables using ~/jaunch-1.0.0/bin/pack.sh, which uses UPX to reduce their file sizes. Be warned that while it is nice to reduce Jaunch to the smallest possible size, we have received reports of Windows anti-malware tools misidentifying the Jaunch configurator as infected by TROJ.Win32.TRX.XXPE50FLM011. So caveat emptor on the binary shrinking!

  2. Code-sign your macOS and/or Windows binaries using ~/jaunch-1.0.0/bin/sign.sh. See these guides for detailed instructions: