Creating shortcuts with IzPack

IzPack is an excellent tool for deploying your software. During the wizard installation process you can create some shortcuts (on Windows or Linux). To enable shortcuts there are a few changes required in your install.xml, then the actual shortcut information is contained in seperate xml files.

First edit your install.xml by adding:

<panels>
...(other panels)...
<panel classname="ShortcutPanel"/>
...(other panels)...
</panels>

(Required for Windows only)
<native type="izpack" name="ShellLink.dll"/>

This ensures the shortcut panel will be present in your installer and the native libraries required for Windows are included. Next specify two shortcuts, one to your application (so a jar) and one to a local HTML file (your documentation). You can alter the file names, as long as you tell install.xml where to find the files.

For Windows, shortcutSpec.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>

<shortcuts>
<skipIfNotSupported/>
<programGroup defaultName="MyApp"
            location="applications"/>
<shortcut
name="wekautils"
target="$INSTALL_PATH\MyApp.jar"
description="Launch app"
workingDirectory="$INSTALL_PATH"
iconFile="$INSTALL_PATH\images\logo.ico"
  initialState="normal"
programGroup="yes"
desktop="yes"
applications="no"
startMenu="no"
startup="no">

<createForPack name="Core"/>
</shortcut>

<shortcut
name="Documentation"
target="$INSTALL_PATH\doc\index.html"
description="Launch documentation"
initialState="normal"
programGroup="yes"
desktop="no"
applications="no"
startMenu="no"
startup="no">

<createForPack name="Core"/>
</shortcut>

</shortcuts>

and for Linux, slightly altered format, Unix_shortcutSpec.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>

<shortcuts>
<skipIfNotSupported/>
<programGroup defaultName="MyApp"
            location="applications"/>
<shortcut
name="MyApp"
target="/usr/bin/java"
commandLine="-jar $INSTALL_PATH/MyApp.jar"
description="Launch MyApp"
iconFile="$INSTALL_PATH/images/MyApp.png"
workingDirectory="$INSTALL_PATH"
initialState="normal"
programGroup="yes"
desktop="no"
applications="no"
startMenu="no"
startup="no"
type="Application"
terminal="true"
encoding="UTF-8">

<createForPack name="Core"/>
</shortcut>

<shortcut
name="Documentation"
description="Launch documentation"
initialState="normal"
programGroup="yes"
desktop="no"
applications="no"
startMenu="no"
startup="no"
type="link"
url="$INSTALL_PATH/doc/index.html"
terminal="false"
encoding="UTF-8">

<createForPack name="Core"/>
</shortcut>

</shortcuts>

See the IzPack website for further documentation.

GROMACS 4

GROMACS 4 was recently released. Installing using the Intel compilers and MKL for FFTW was the same as with 3.3.3.

See my previous post for full instruction. Please note the lines to change in configure are now 26595 and 26663.

Also note the test set hasn't been updated for version 4, so keep and eye out for that.

IzPack & CruiseControl

I have CruiseControl configured to run IzPack after successfully compiling and testing my code. Thanks to ant integration this is very easy, see here. Izpack has a few other tricks, namely izpack2app and izpack2exe. These python scripts wrap your newly created installer.jar into either a Mac OS X application or a Window executable. Users of these platforms can now run them without the command-line. I've added these steps into CruiseControl so after each build my artifacts tab gives me 3 versions of my installer. The Mac OS application is actually a folder, so zip that up as CC won't have a folder as an artifact.

Edit your config.xml to include something like this:

<schedule interval="3600">
<composite>
     <ant antworkingdir="checkout/${project.name}" 
           buildfile="build.xml" target="izpack" />
     <exec workingdir="checkout/${project.name}/dist" 
     command="/usr/bin/python" 
     args="/Applications/IzPack/utils/izpack2app/izpack2app.py
     installer.jar installer.app"/>
     <exec workingdir="checkout/${project.name}/dist" 
     command="/usr/bin/tar" args="cvfz installer.zip installer.app" />
     <exec workingdir="checkout/${project.name}/dist" 
     command="/usr/bin/python" 
     args="/Applications/IzPack/utils/izpack2exe/izpack2exe.py
     --file=installer.jar --output=installer.exe --no-upx />

</composite>

</schedule>

The four steps are compile from your build.xml, giving your installer.jar. Create the Mac app, zip it, then create the Windows executable. You need 7Zip for the Windows part, Mac users get it via MacPorts: sudo port install p7zip. Don't forget to add the new files to your artifactspublisher.