How to get the JRE to bundle with launch4j?

Question

I understand that launch4j doesn\'t bundle the JRE in the .exe but that you have to place it next to it. My question is, how am I supposed to do that? Is there

Answer 1

UPDATE: Deleted my previous answer and replacing with tested working example

UPDATE 2: This pom.xml now downloads the JRE tgz and unpacks it and the launch4j exe uses it and it works. I added comments to explain how it works.

I would recommend sticking with just a 32 bit exe and JRE. The only reason to use the 64 bit JRE would be if your program needs to use more than 4 GB of RAM.

Of course now you need an installer that takes all this and installs to Program Files. I've used NSIS for this in the past. There is a learning curve for NSIS but it is not too bad.

    4.0.0
    com.akathist.encc
    mavenproject1
    1.0-SNAPSHOT
    jar
    
        UTF-8
        1.8
        1.8
    
    
        
        
            com.oracle.java
            jre
            win32
            tgz
            1.8.0_131
        
    
    
        
            
            alfresco
            https://artifacts.alfresco.com/nexus/content/repositories/public/
        
    
    
        
            
                
                org.apache.maven.plugins
                maven-dependency-plugin
                2.5.1
                
                    
                        generate-resources
                        
                            unpack-dependencies
                        
                        
                            com.oracle.java
                            tgz
                            jre
                            win32
                            target/win32
                        
                    
                
            
            
                
                com.akathist.maven.plugins.launch4j
                launch4j-maven-plugin
                
                    
                        l4j-clui
                        package
                        
                            launch4j
                        
                        
                            console
                            target/encc.exe
                            target/mavenproject1-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
                            encc
                            
                                com.akathist.encc.Clui
                                false
                                anything
                            
                            
                                ./win32/java
                            
                            
                                1.2.3.4
                                txt file version?
                                a description
                                my copyright
                                4.3.2.1
                                txt product version
                                E-N-C-C
                                ccne
                                original.exe
                            
                        
                    
                
            
        
    

UPDATE 3: The sad fact is that there exists no offical or even up-to-date maven repo with the JREs that you want. You could host your own maven repo that has the desired JREs. You will have to update this as new releases are done. It is also a good idea to test with the new version before releasing with it. The third Tuesday of every month is when new Java releases are done. You can set a reminder for this to check if a new version was released and download it. Automating this is a pain because of the license agreement check. This post might help but you probably can't download the tar.gz version of the JRE this way: Java check latest version programmatically

If you want to support multiple platforms then hosting your own maven repo is a good way to go. You can host your own repo and update it with the new JRE tar.gz every time a release is done with this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/29261502/35264

The simplest option is to do what you were aiming for already and just use the JRE that you are building with. This will allow you to support Windows 32 and 64 as long as you build with the 32 bit JRE. You can update this occasionally as you have time to test with the new version. Here is a working pom.xml that does this:

    4.0.0
    com.akathist.encc
    mavenproject1
    1.0-SNAPSHOT
    jar
    
        UTF-8
        1.8
        1.8
    
    
        
            
                
                maven-resources-plugin
                2.6
                
                    
                        copy-resources
                        
                        package
                        
                            copy-resources
                        
                        
                            ${basedir}/target/win32/java
                            
                                
                                    ${java.home}
                                
                            
                        
                    
                
            
            
                
                com.akathist.maven.plugins.launch4j
                launch4j-maven-plugin
                
                    
                        l4j-clui
                        package
                        
                            launch4j
                        
                        
                            console
                            target/encc.exe
                            target/mavenproject1-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
                            encc
                            
                                com.akathist.encc.Clui
                                false
                                anything
                            
                            
                                ./win32/java
                            
                            
                                1.2.3.4
                                txt file version?
                                a description
                                my copyright
                                4.3.2.1
                                txt product version
                                E-N-C-C
                                ccne
                                original.exe