installation - JAR installer that auto-detects if Java is there and autostarts the application

Question

I need to build an installer that does the following:

1. Installs my jar on the client.
2. Auto-detects if JRE is installed (in which case it does not re-install it), otherwise installs it without the user clicking on another button.
3. Auto-starts the application when the client is booted.
4. Works across Windows, Mac and Linux.

Any idea how to go about it?

Answer 1

If a commercial tool is ok, I can recommend install4j. 1, 2 and 4 are easy to do with it, but about 3 I'm not sure. Edit: You could probably achieve that by installing your app as a "service", which install4j supports for all platforms. Quoting from its Features page:

install4j offers full support for generating and installing services (daemons). For services, install4j generates service executables on Windows, startup items on Mac OS X and start/stop scripts on Unix/Linux platforms.

Edit: Regarding #2, JRE detection: install4 has pretty nice, flexible options for JRE bundling/detecting. You can include a JRE (statically or dynamically, shared or not) or prefer to use one already present, with the possibility to download a JRE from within your installer as a fallback. Check these docs for more: How Installers Find a JRE and JRE Bundles.

(More about my experiences with install4j.)

For other tools, you could check some of the earlier Java installer questions on SO:

• What’s the best way to distribute Java applications?
• Java Application Installers
• What is the best installation tool for java?