Lesson: Deploying Self-Contained Applications

A self-contained application consists of a single, installable bundle that contains your application and a copy of the JRE needed to run the application. When the application is installed, it behaves the in the same way as any native application. Providing users with a self-contained application avoids the security issues related to running an application in a browser.

You can customize a self-contained application by providing your own icons and progress indicator. File associations can be set up so when a user opens a file that your application can handle, your application is started automatically. Multiple entry points are supported so you can deliver a suite of applications in a single self-contained application bundle.

Self-contained applications can be packaged using the Java Packaging tools. The javavpackager command creates the bundle for self-contained applications from the command line. NetBeans can also be used to created self-contained application bundles. This lesson describes how to use Ant tasks to create the bundles.

Additional References

For more information about self-contained applications, see Self-Contained Application Packaging in the Java Platform, Standard Edition Deployment Guide.

For information about Ant tasks for Java packaging, see JavaFX Ant Tasks , which are used for packaging Java SE and JavaFX applications.

For information about the javapackager command, see Java Deployment Tools .