Bundle tomcat/mysql and a webapp to use as a desktop application

Question

Is there some opensource solution that allows you to do that.I am working on a webapplication that i want to bundled as a desktop app. I had seen some products that are web apps but are bundled as desktop apps.Is it possible to bundle JDK/tomcat/mysql and the webapp war file to ship as a desktop product.Could you please point to some resource that can help me do this.

One solution that i am thinking of is to bundled the entire stuff as a zip file and then provide an install.bat along with it.Please provide some more info regarding other ways to do this.Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

I think your initial intuition is good on this one; bundling them all together in a single zip file, and then just providing a script to install them sounds like a good solution.

Answer 2

This is not so easy to do, because of the following:

• It is not possible to install MySQL server with a simple zip file. You need a regular installer and user interaction to create the root user.
• Even if you install Tomcat in a directory, you still need user interaction to set up JAVA_HOME or JRE_HOME and probably CATALINA_HOME variables.

I suggest the following for your situation:

• Use HSQLB instead of MySQL. This is much easier to configure.
• Use Jetty instead of Tomcat. Jetty is easier to embed than Tomcat. Whereas Tomcat will probably need an installer, Jetty is as simple as starting a Java application.

Answer 3

I am trying to do the same thing - tomcat startup.bat and catalina.bat scripts will find the JAVA_HOME and JRE_HOME variables. I edited the catalina.bat script to set the JRE_HOME variable to run from \jre (just copied over a jre folder) and that does it.

hsqldb and derby do not need a db install (however my project doesn't need a db - so don't have much to say about that).

i am thinking of jsmooth as an installer - need to check how I can change paths in a couple of configuration files without introducing perl into the mix to edit the files.

jetty is lighter than tomcat (unless you try tomcat embedded; i would get tomcat embedded to load, but wasn't picking up the search configuration files for some reason - didn't spend too much time on that).

Answer 4

Look for openbdjam and liferay, both of which I am testing today....