Distributing a java application

[Pranabesh Sinha]

Hi
I have a very basic question.
I have a java application that currently starts via a main program. I want to distribute it to clients so that the application runs on all platforms continuously in the background.
I saw java service wrapper, but I couldn't figure out how to make a distributable file out of it.
I guess java web start would be another solution, but then again how do I make my application run in the background non stop (if it stops then I'd like the OS to restart it....much like a service).
Spent a whole day googling for the answer, but can't find a viable solution.

Thanks
Prnbs

[Paul Clapham]

What do you mean by a "distributable program"? Everything is distributable, you don't have to do anything special.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Welcome to JavaRanch

Is thisof any help?

[Pranabesh Sinha]

@Paul Clapman -- My mistake. I meant that I want to pack my code maybe as an exe for windows or dmg for mac (I have already tried the obvious executable jar)

@Campbell Ritchie -- Thanks for the link. I have been looking at Java web start, but for my code to really work well, I'd like my code to run as a windows service and whatever the equivalent of that in other OS are. But as far as I have understood applications based on Java web start need some kind of user intervention to start (if say the pc was shutdown)

[Rob Spoor]

You can use the Java Service Wrapper for that. Still, I think you'll need an installer for each platform, since installing services is not the same for all platforms. For instance, in Windows you need to register the service ("sc create <service name> <full path to the executable> start=auto DisplayName=" can be used, or you can use Windows API calls), while in Linux you need to create a starter file called S<2 digit number><name> in /etc/rc.d (I think it was this folder).