Apache NetBeans 25
Native Packaging in NetBeans IDE
Native packaging was first introduced as a part of the JavaFX 2.2 SDK enabling you to package an application as a native bundle and then installing and running the application without any external dependencies on a system JRE or JavaFX SDK. Next it became usable for Java SE projects as well.
Native packaging does not change the deployment model of your application: it takes your application as it is, packages it together with Java runtime, and produces an installer that is common for the operating system you are using. The point is to make the whole thing independent on whatever Java runtime users have or do not have on the target machine. You can take such an installer and run it on a machine where there is no trace of Java, and it will install both the application and the necessary Java runtime bits.The size of such installers is quite big, because even a "Hello world" application will carry with itself a large portion of Java runtime artifacts.
In this tutorial you will create an EXE installer for a Java SE application and an MSI installer for a JavaFX application for the Windows operating system based on the sample applications bundled with the IDE.
NOTE:
The
EXEandMSIinstallers you get are platform-specific, they will run only on a system that is compatible with the target Java platform for which theEXE/MSIinstallable packages have been created. (For example, if anEXEorMSIinstaller has been created on a machine with a 64-bit JDK installed, it must be run on a machine with 64-bit Windows installed.)On Windows, both the applications are installed into the
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\directory and are available in the Start menu.
