How to create installers with Maven

Question

I\'m migrating a medium sized Java application\'s build from Ant to Maven. I could easily migrate the basic building stuff, but I would also like to create the installer pac

Answer 1

I'd use the IzPack maven plugin if you need a full-blown installer, or the appassembler-maven-plugin if you simply need to generate daemons for java services.

There are also plugins for NSIS, Debian, and RPM packaging, but using those means you have to maintain configurations for each platform, on the other hand IzPack allows you to generate an installer for Windows XP / Vista / 2003 / 2000, Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux and *BSD.

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The appassembler plugin provides a goal to generate JSW daemons for each platform. Here is an example configuration:

  org.codehaus.mojo
  appassembler-maven-plugin
  1.0
  
    generate-jsw-scripts
    package
    
      generate-daemons
    
    
      
        
          myApp
          name.seller.rich.MainClass
          
            start
          
          
            jsw
                        
        
      
      ${project.build.directory}/appassembler