via Java.net door mkarg op 29-12-10

After more than a decade in the Java universe, today I had just enough of remembering where my executable JARs are located and typing all the lengthy path names, so I finally taught Windows to deal with Java archives just the same way as it deals with it’s native executables EXE and CMD.

After more than a decade in the Java universe, today I had just enough of remembering where my executable JARs are located and typing all the lengthy path names, so I finally taught Windows to deal with Java archives just the same way as it deals with it’s native executables EXE and CMD. The trick is so simple that I actually do not understand why the JRE installer isn’t applying it automatically to prevent everybody from reinventing the wheel.

Nobody wants to type so much

Two ofmy most needed programs when coding on Windows, even in the Eclipse era,are the Command Line Interface (CLI) and the Text Editor. As programmers always are in a hurry, and as I am faster in typing than in clicking, I typically start those by entering their respective binary image names at the start line (thanks Microsoft for not completely dropping it even in Windows 7). After decades of Windows, I meanwhile know that those images are%WINDIR%\System32\cmd.exe and %WINDIR%\System32\notepad.exe. In fact, this was not always the case. I can remember that before Windows NT it was not cmd.exe but COMMAND.COM (which actually still is existing even on Windows 7). But actually, I never typed the complete path, and I typically do not type the extension.Actually I don’t care where to find the program, and I don’t care whether the image is an EXE, COM, CMD or whatever. Windows knows where to find them, even if I am in a different current working directory, even if I omit the file extension. So now I want that magic for JARs, too. I want that my Java applications is found and started, without giving the absolute path, without giving the .jar file extension.

Getting rid of the file extension

For this to work, the first step is to tell Windows to consider a particular file extension as searchable. This is as easy as adding the extension .jar to the list of searchable extensions, which is stored in the PATHEXTenvironment variable. At the command line, this can be done temporarily (i. e. for just the current CLI session) using SET PATHEXT=%PATHEXT%;.JAR, but to make it persistent for future uses, it makes sense to instead set this in the Windows registry (e. g. using the Extended Systems Settings GUI). This was half the rent already. Now Windows knows that you will omit this extension from now on.

Getting rid of the path

The second step is to tell Windows to consider a particular path as searchable. This is as easy as appending the location to the PATH environment variable, which can be done in several ways, e. g. by using the command line for a temporary change using SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\WhereMyJarIsLocated or using the mentioned GUI. That’s it. Now Windows will search that place(s) for my JARs. Great.

No magic included, unfortunately

As I wrote, it’s just two little tweaks. No tricks. No Magic. All the rest is done by the operating system’s intrinsic fmunctionality, plus a trick applied by the JRE installer: The installer already was kind enough to register the javaw.exe program as the executor for JAR files. So Windows knows what to do with our JAR once it was found. In the very early ages of Java, one had to do that manually, which was not complicated, but just another more GUI click to do.

But the world is not perfect yet. When running our executable JAR, what Windows actually is executing is not our JAR but the Java VM Launcher (i. e. %WINDIR%\System32\javaw.exe). That launcher is interpreting (or compiling and then executing) the content of our JAR (for those who forgot). So, the operating system’s list of processes does not contain our JAR. It just contains javaw.exe, once for each started executable JAR. This is rather annoying, as one cannot easily find out which PID in fact is executing which JAR. You certainly canconfigure Task Manager to display the complete (and rather lengthy) command line invoked to run this process, but it is just not as smart as real EXEs, which are directly named as the process name. Sad but true, there is no simple help for this. Using a hard or soft link is not enough to rename the process (it still will show the target’s name, not the source’s name). In fact, to solve that, one would have to write a wrapper (or copy javaw.exe, or use one of those fancy wrappers available on the web). It would just be nice if javaw would create such a copy the fly and hand over execution to the newly created copy, but in fact I doubt that Oracle will do that any soon…

Regards, Markus.

An overview of all my different publications and products can be found on my personal web site Head CrashingInformatics (http://www.headcrashing.eu).