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<h1>IzPack utilities</h1>

<p>The IzPack project includes a set of utilities that you may find useful.</p>

<p>These projects live outside the regular IzPack installer Subversion repository. You can access it from <a href="http://svn.berlios.de/svnroot/repos/izpack/izpack-utils/">http://svn.berlios.de/svnroot/repos/izpack/izpack-utils/</a> instead of <a href="http://svn.berlios.de/svnroot/repos/izpack/izpack-src/">http://svn.berlios.de/svnroot/repos/izpack/izpack-src/</a> for IzPack itself.</p>

<p>They will be shipped in the official IzPack releases under their own pack.</p>

<h2>Windows executable wrapper (izpack2exe)</h2>

<h3>Description</h3>

<p>The 7-Zip project (see <a href="http://www.7-zip.org/)">http://www.7-zip.org/)</a> provides a so-called SFX for installers, i.e., an image that can be use to create self-extracting Windows executables. Once its content has been extracted, such a self-extracting executable can launch an executable or a file. In the later case, it is assumed that there exists an association between a file extension and a software component.</p>

<p>7-Zip SFX for installers works as follows:</p>

<ol>
	<li>an executable image is provided</li>
	<li>a configuration file has to be written, specifying among other things the executable or the file to be launched after the extraction phase</li>
	<li>a 7-Zip archive containing the files (including the executable of file to be launched)</li>
	<li>these files simply need to be concatenated to form a SFX Windows executable.</li>
</ol>

<p>The IzPack Windows executable wrapper takes an IzPack-generated installer JAR file, and wraps it inside a Windows SFX executable. This has several advantages, among these two ones:</p>

<ol>
	<li>some users may find it strange to have a JAR and not an executable</li>
	<li>by naming it with <em>setup</em> or <em>install</em>, Windows VISTA will perform a rights elevation whereas IzPack cannot enforce it when launched as a regular JAR.</li>
</ol>

<p>And of course, you can ship a JAR and a Windows executable from the very same IzPack installer descriptor!</p>

<p>We have customized the SFX image from the 7-Zip project as follows:</p>

<ul>
	<li>we have changed the icon</li>
	<li>we have customized some strings to mention that this is a customized version.</li>
</ul>

<p>While the rest of the work is licensed under the Apache License version 2, the sole SFX module is licensed under the Lesser GNU General Public License version 2 or later as required by the 7-Zip project.</p>

<h3>Requirements</h3>

<p><strong>izpack2exe</strong> is written in Python. It depends on 7-Zip and optionnaly UPX, a tool that can compresses executables.</p>

<p>In official IzPack releases, we provide this tool <em>batteries-included</em> on Windows, i.e., we will provide:</p>

<table class="wysiwyg-macro" data-macro-name="panel" style="background-image: url(/plugins/servlet/confluence/placeholder/macro-heading?definition=e3BhbmVsfQ&amp;locale=en_GB&amp;version=2); background-repeat: no-repeat;" data-macro-body-type="RICH_TEXT"><tr><td class="wysiwyg-macro-body">
<p> *<strong>izpack2exe</strong> as a Windows executable, so that you don't need to install Python, and</p></td></tr></table>
<ul>
	<li>7-Zip and UPX executables, so you don't have to download them.</li>
</ul>

<h3>Usage</h3>

<p>The usage is quite easy:</p>

<table class="wysiwyg-macro" data-macro-name="code" style="background-image: url(/plugins/servlet/confluence/placeholder/macro-heading?definition=e2NvZGV9&amp;locale=en_GB&amp;version=2); background-repeat: no-repeat;" data-macro-body-type="PLAIN_TEXT"><tr><td class="wysiwyg-macro-body"><pre>usage: izpack2exe.py [options]

options:
  -h, --help       show this help message and exit
  --file=FILE      The installer JAR file / files (1 per bundled file, specify at least the installer JAR!)
  --output=OUTPUT  The executable file
  --with-7z=P7Z    Path to the 7-Zip executable
  --with-upx=UPX   Path to the UPX executable
  --no-upx         Do not use UPX to further compress the output
  --launch-file    File to launch after extract (e.g., native launcher)</pre></td></tr></table>
<p>A typical wrapping will be done like:</p>

<h3>Description</h3>

<p><strong>izpack2app</strong> is the Mac OS X brother of <strong>izpack2exe</strong>. It bundles a JAR installer inside an application bundle, so that your installer will look like a regular Mac OS X application.</p>

<p>To do that, we started from the Mac OS X <em>Jar Bundler</em> tool that you can find under <em>/Developer/Java</em>. We bundled a Jar installer, then stripped it. Indeed, an application bundle is nothing else but a structured set of files and directories.</p>

<p>What <strong>izpack2app</strong> does is simply:</p>

<ol>
	<li>copy the bundle files structure,</li>
	<li>put your Jar at the good place, and</li>
	<li>edit the <em>Info.plist</em> to reference your Jar.</li>
</ol>

<h3>Requirements</h3>

<p><strong>izpack2app</strong> is written in Python. It does not require any third-party module to work. Python is bundled with Mac OS X and is mainstream on Linux and other Unix variants. We ship it as a Windows executable in the official IzPack releases (and of course also as a Python application!).</p>

<h3>Usage</h3>

<p>The usage is straightforward:</p>

<h2>Java Web Start JNLP file generator (izpack2jnlp)</h2>

<h3>Description</h3>

<p><strong>izpack2jnlp</strong> is able to generate Java Web Start JNLP files so that IzPack-based installers can also be shipped via Java Web Start.</p>

<h3>Requirements</h3>

<p><strong>izpack2jnlp</strong> is written in Python and does not need third-party modules to work.</p>

<p>Please note that it only generates JNLP files: <strong>you must sign your installer JAR</strong> before you actually upload them to a web server as <strong>Java Web Start refuses to launch unsigned JARs</strong>.</p>

<h3>Usage</h3>

<p>You need to pass a few arguments on the command-line, run:</p>