TomcatCreateNativeLaunchers

Native Tomcat Launchers

Sometimes it is convinient to start Tomcat using a native launcher under Windows & Mac OS X

Clear distinction between other running Tomcat instances
Integration with desktop application launchers
Shipping a Tomcat-based product

In my particular use case I was creating native launchers for Apache JSPWiki (see https://jspwiki.apache.org)

Available Options

What options do you have in the open-source world

for Mac OS and Oracle JDK you can use AppBundler (see http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/guides/jweb/packagingAppsForMac.html)
for Windows you can use Launch4J (see http://launch4j.sourceforge.net)

Mac OS X AppBundler

The following snippet

defines an a Ant task definition "bundleappp"
invokes the "bundleapp" tasks to create a native Mac OS X launcher
sets the executable flag of the underyling native launcher (just to make 100% sure the file is exetuable)

<target name="woas:mac-app-oracle-jdk" description="creates an Mac OS X application wrapper for Oracle JDK 1.7+">
    <taskdef 
        name="bundleapp" 
        classname="com.oracle.appbundler.AppBundlerTask"
        classpath="${basedir}/src/resources/appbundler/appbundler-1.0.jar" 
    />
    <bundleapp 
        outputdirectory="${jspwiki.woas.assembly.dir}"
        name="woas"
        displayname="Portable JSPWiki"
        identifier="org.apache.jspwiki.jspwiki-portable"
        icon="${basedir}/src/resources/macos/jspwiki.icns"
        shortversion="${jspwiki.woas.version}"
        applicationCategory="public.app-category.developer-tools"
        mainclassname="org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap">
        <classpath file="${basedir}/target/unpack/tomcat/${jspwiki.tomcat.distribution}/bin/bootstrap.jar"/>
        <classpath file="${basedir}/target/unpack/tomcat/${jspwiki.tomcat.distribution}/bin/tomcat-juli.jar"/>
        <option value="-Xmx96m"/>
        <option value="-Duser.dir=$APP_ROOT/.."/>
        <option value="-Dcatalina.home=$APP_ROOT/.."/>
        <option value="-Dcatalina.base=$APP_ROOT/.."/>
        <option value="-Djava.io.tmpdir=$APP_ROOT/../temp"/>
    </bundleapp>
    <chmod file="${jspwiki.woas.assembly.dir}/woas.app/Contents/MacOS/JavaAppLauncher" perm="ugo+x"/>
</target>

Some notes along the line

"APP_ROOT" is the directory of the Mac OS X launcher and will be expanded accordingly during run-time
The current working directory is undefined therefore all "important" properties must be provided
The two referenced JARs are effectively copied into the native launcher
No JRE is packaged since it assumed that the JRE is available on the target box
If you need to change the memory settings for an existing native app than you can edit the "Info.plist" directly
If the native app is starting at all you get no error message which is a bit annoying - as work-around you can launch at the command line to see the output, e.g "./woas.app/Contents/MacOS/JavaAppLauncher"

Windows Launch4J

Defines an a Ant task definition "launch4j"
Invokes the "launch4j" tasks to create a native Mac OS X launcher

<target name="woas:windows-app" description="creates an windows application wrapper">
    <taskdef 
      name="launch4j"
      classname="net.sf.launch4j.ant.Launch4jTask"
      classpath="${basedir}/src/resources/launch4j/launch4j-3.1.0-beta2.jar:${basedir}/src/resources/launch4j/xstream.jar" 
    />
    <launch4j>
      <config 
        headerType="console" 
        outfile="${jspwiki.woas.assembly.dir}/woas.exe" 
        errTitle="WikiOnAStick" 
        chdir="." 
        icon="${basedir}/src/resources/windows/jspwiki.ico"
        jar="${basedir}/src/resources/tomcat/tomcat-launcher-7.0.52.jar"
        >
        <singleInstance mutexName="org.apache.jspwiki.jspwiki-portable" />
        <jre minVersion="1.6.0" />
        <versionInfo
          fileVersion="2.1.10.1"
          txtFileVersion="JSPWiki ${jspwiki.woas.version}"
          fileDescription="WikiOnAStick"
          copyright="Apache Software Licence 2.0"
          productVersion="2.1.10.1"
          txtProductVersion="JSPWiki ${jspwiki.woas.version}"
          productName="WikiOnAStick"
          companyName="Apache Software Foundation"
          internalName="woas"
          originalFilename="woas.exe"
        />        
      </config>  
    </launch4j>
  </target>