3.  Dynamic commandline(s)

Version 1.2 of Orangevolt Ant Tasks extends the commandine parameters of jstub and sfx task. You can add placeholders for enviroment and registry settings to the commandline which are evaluated and replaced at runtime.

When do i need this feature ?

Suppose your application setup installs a private java runtime and the path to it is stored in the windows registry. Your application does not know about the location of the private java runtime.
By using the registry/enviroment features of sfx and jstub you are able to retrieve registry/enviroment informations at executable runtime.
The following example commandline will query the registry and replace the ant tokens by the queries value:

class com.orangevolt.sourcestyle.xalan.Extension : error : mode bat is unknown.

The commandline(s) patched into executables created with jstub and sfx are parsed for ant styled variable placeholders containing

• type of information

  Registry(reg), enviroment(env) or application(app).

  reg queries windows registry entries.

  env queries a environment variable.

  app queries parts of the executable file name/path.

  The app type is especially useful when you need to know where your executable resides.

  For example

  ${app:path}

  returns the directory where your executable resides. The jstub created executable can contain the following executable string

  javaw -Djava.ext.dirs="${app:path}" -jar ${app:absolutepath}

  which is at runtime replaced by path (${app:path}) an path+absolutename (${app:absolutepath}) of your executable.

• name of the information

  In case of an enviroment setting use the name of the enviroment variable (${env:TEMP} or ${env:TOMCAT_HOME} for example).

  When accessing the registry

• default value

  The default value will be returned in case that the requested enviroment variable or registry key was not found.

Syntax

Placeholders in general are defined using the following syntax:

${type:name(|default)*}

• type

  type is either reg (for registry), env (for enviroment) or app (for application).

• name

  The name of the value to query.

  env

  In case of a queried enviroment variable simply use the name of the variable.

  reg

  When querying an registry key you have to use the following sub syntax for the name key\subkey.

  • key

    The key is the name of the registry part to query. Valid values are

    • HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
    • HKEY_CURRENT_USER
    • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
    • HKEY_USERS

  • subkey

    The subkey identifies the registry branch to query.

    The following variable definition queries the window desktop location ${reg:HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders\Desktop}.

    This example queries location of an installed jdk 1.4.2 and returns c:\java if it is not set ${reg:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\Java Development Kit\1.4.2|c:\java}.

  app

  When querying the app type the following predefined names can be used:

  • name

    name is the file name of the executable WITHOUT file suffix. The name of a executable named "test.exe" is "test".

  • absolutename

    absolutename is the real file name of the executable. The absolutename of a executable named "test.exe" is "test.exe".

  • path

    path is the directory where the executable resides. The path of a executable located in "c:\temp" is "c:\temp".

  • absolutepath

    absolutepath is the name of the executable including its full path. The absolutepath of a executable "test.exe" located in "c:\temp" is "c:\temp\test.exe".

• default

  This value will be used if the enviroment variable or registry value was not found.

  default is ignored for type app.

The registry feature is only available for win32 executables created with sfx/jstub.