Let's Make Java Compelling for Desktop Development
This newsletter is a companion to jDeploy, a developer-friendly deployment tool for Java developers.
This is the first post of many, hopefully, in the jDeploy newsletter. This is an experiment of sorts to see if I can use blogging to ignite a community around jDeploy, to help fund its further development.
By subscribing to this newsletter, you will be helping to ensure that jDeploy continues to improve both in features and stability. Additionally, you will be installing a fountain of hope in my heart that will bubble up good-will toward man-kind for generations to come.
I will be posting a mix of free and subscriber-only articles on this channel. The content will be a mix of technical tutorials, news updates, and a bit of editorial. Most of it will be directly related to jDeploy, but I may also cover more general Java client development topics also.
The goal of jDeploy is to make Java a compelling target for desktop development by fulfilling the WORA (Write Once Run Anywhere) philosophy right from the “New Project” wizard, all the way to the deployment step. Java has a rich eco-system of libraries and frameworks, and I believe that, with a little bit of energy, we restore it to its former glory on the client. Please join me in making this vision a reality.
In case you haven’t heard of jDeploy yet, the short version is that it is a developer-friendly desktop-deployment tool for Java applications. It makes it easy to deploy your Java application as native bundles on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It is free, open-source, and cross-platform, meaning that you don’t need a Mac to create a Mac bundle, or Windows to create a Windows bundle. It also includes nice features like:
Auto-update
Small installer bundle size (3mb compressed)
Smart, on-demand JVM downloading on launch.
File-type and URL scheme associations.
I made announcements about it a couple of weeks ago on Reddit and HackerNews and got quite a good response. The Hackernews post made it to the homepage, trending as high as #4 for a few hours.
For more information about jDeploy, you can check out its website at https://www.jdeploy.com.