1. IzPack
IzPack is an installer generator for the Java platform. It produces lightweight installers that can be run on any operating system where a Java virtual machine is available. Depending on the operating system, it can be launched by a double-click or a simple java -jar installer.jar from a shell. The most common use is to distribute applications for the Java platform, but you can also use it for other kinds of projects. The main benefit of IzPack is that it provides a clean and unique way of distributing a project to users using different operating systems. IzPack is reported to run on:
- Unix-like systems, mostly Linux and FreeBSD variants
- Mac OS X
- Windows 2000, XP and Vista.
1.1. Main features
- XML-based installer descriptors
- Uses the maximum Jar archives compression level
- Apache Ant integration
Great flexibility and modularity, it is very easy to extend IzPack
No native code is required, but you can extend IzPack with native code
Shortcuts creation system (Win32 and FreeDesktop.org)
- Flexible and powerful user input panel
- Automatic uninstaller creation
- Easy localization (translation into foreign languages)
- Variables substitution system
- OS-specific scripts interaction
- ... and many more!
1.2. Licensing
IzPack is licensed under the terms of the liberal opensource Apache Software License version 2.0.
