What is the best way to ship a tornadofx applicati...

# tornadofx

[spierce7]

What is the best way to ship a tornadofx application as a standalone package?

[Dominaezzz]

You mean without the needing to install JRE too?

[Marshall]

I use jpackage in JDK 14 to make platform specific packages/installers

[Marshall]

You can still build with JDK 11 and just use JDK14 for jpackage part

[Marshall]

I use the "badass" runtime gradle plugin that does all the work for you

[Marshall]

If you want to make a single executable you can use graalvm and gluon substrate but the resulting executable is huge and it's tricky to get working

[spierce7]

@Marshall But using jpackage you are left with an installation that is normal for each of the OS?

[spierce7]

i.e. for Windows I'd have a .exe, on mac I'd have a .dmg, right?

[Marshall]

Yes but you have to build on each platform

[Marshall]

On windows, you can get an msi installer or an exe installer

[Marshall]

Linux, deb or rpm

[Marshall]

Mac dmg or pkg

[spierce7]

but you are left with an installer for each platform?

[spierce7]

if I wanted to ship an application update, how difficult is it?

[Marshall]

For windows, you specifiy the upgrade uuid

[Marshall]

so if you run a new version of the installer, it will do the upgrade

[Marshall]

I have tested that and it works, I have not tested linux and mac

[Draget]

If you need always-online-update functionality and transparent, robust handling of JREs with a downloadable native app that needs no admin permissions, you might want to check out 'trivrost' on GitHub. (Disclaimer: I am one of the maintainer)