Include icon in Self-Contained JavaFX application

Question

I\'ve been fighting with this for over a day and have read many posts on SO and other places, but I\'m still having problems.

I need to include my application icon i

Answer 1

Prerequirements / Assumptions

• You're on Windows (7, 8, 8.1)
• You have a JDK installed at least in version 1.8.0 (javafx included)
• You've set the JAVA_HOME environment variable pointing to the top directory of your JDK (ex. C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_45)
• You have Inno Setup at least in version 5.5.5 installed (prefered the unicode version)
• You already have a icon file (256 x 256px), prefered a multisize one. I recommend to visit this site: http://icoconvert.com/
• You already have a bmp file (48 x 48 px) for the setup installer as setup icon

Solution

Project structure

First you need to setup the Project in a valid structure, like this: Your package folder have to be in the project root folder and not in any subfolder like src or resources.

pom.xml

There are some more properties needed for doing the correct deploy. As you can see in the antrun plugin section, you need to reassign the properties for your ant environment before you can call the build file. The properties are automatically set to the called build file. Normaly Intellij Idea will create the pom.xml for you in the project root dir.

    4.0.0

    com.autoap
    HelloWorld
    2.0
    jar

    
        UTF-8
        com.autoap.client.HelloWorld
        ${project.artifactId}
        Han Solo
    

    
        Star Wars
    

    
        
            
                org.apache.maven.plugins
                maven-dependency-plugin
                2.6
                
                    
                        unpack-dependencies
                        package
                        
                            unpack-dependencies
                        
                        
                            system
                            junit,org.mockito,org.hamcrest
                            ${project.build.directory}/classes
                        
                    
                
            
            
                org.codehaus.mojo
                exec-maven-plugin
                1.2.1
                
                    
                        default-cli
                        
                            exec
                        
                        
                            ${java.home}/bin/java
                            -jar '${project.build.directory}/dist/${project.build.finalName}-${project.version}.jar'
                            
                        
                    
                
            
            
                org.apache.maven.plugins
                maven-compiler-plugin
                3.1
                
                    1.8
                    1.8
                
            

            
                maven-antrun-plugin
                1.8
                
                    
                        package
                        
                            
                                
                                
                                
                                
                                
                                
                                
                                
                                
                                
                                
                                
                                
                            
                        
                        
                            run
                        
                    
                
            
        
    

build.xml

I've tried to make it loosley coupled, so there is normaly no need to change anything in that file. Only if you want to have signing or special behaviour etc.The build.xml file should be saved in the project root dir.

Images in package folder

The images in your package folder need to be renamed. The icon file need to be exactly (case-sensitive) named as the property application.title in your maven pom. The second file is the setup icon, it need the exact application title as first part and -setup-icon.bmp the last part. It needs to be a bmp. Sizes mentioned above.

My images looks like that:

Run configuration

The only thing you now need is to run the scripts to deploy it. For this you need a special run configuration like showing in the next screen:

App

After you have configured the run, run it and you will get the app. My App is nothing special only the default Hello World example and it looks like that:

Path to exe installer

In your project root is a folder target->dist->bundles, there you get your new Setup.exe

Installer with icon

Finally you got it.

Target structure

The target folder contains a non valid jar from the maven run, but it doesn't matter. You only should know, that if you only want the jar to start by double click, you need to choose the one in the dist folder. The jar in the dist folder is essential, because the whole process of creating an installer relies on this jar. Now you be also able to put a *.iss file in your package windows folder to customize more parts of the creation process, like a license file etc. For doing this, have a look here at the documention of Inno Setup.