To get started packaging  your Java application with JWrapper you should first download the JWrapper application and request a trial license:

The JWrapper app is made to be simple and easy to use.  When it first launches you will be asked to choose a folder for your new JWrapper project.  This is where JWrapper will store temporary files related to your build and also where it will produce the final native applications.

On the first page of the application, you will see a configuration form with a few items highlighted in red.  These are the minimum items you need to configure to produce a build with JWrapper.

To try out a simple build, you can fill in these items, then hit the 'Dev Build' button at the bottom of the application to start the build.

• Bundle Name - this will be the name of your packaged application, it will be used by JWrapper to specify the installation folder and other install-related items
• App Name - this will be the name of the native application as it appears to the user when they run it.  For example on Windows, this will appear in the start menu.
• App Main Class - this is the Java class that contains your main method, for example: com.mycompany.MyMainClass
• JAR files - this is where you can specify JAR files to be added to the JRE classpath when JWrapper runs your application.   To add files click the folder button on the right of the list and select the file to add.

Once these are configured you can switch to the Enterprise tab and add your trial license at the top and hit the Dev Build button.

When you run the build, it will initially take a number of minutes (subsequent builds will be much quicker) before popping up a window with a link to the folder containing your new native apps.

After these steps, once your build is complete you will have native applications for Windows, Linux and MacOS in the build folder and can run your Java application as if it were a native app.
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If you run your application and it doesn't pop up, you can check out our Debugging with JWrapper Guide to see where your app is installed and where it is logging errors to.  Often this is something simple like a missing file you need to add to the bundle.
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The JWrapper app also supports the following settings when building your application:

• Bundle Logo (PNG) - a PNG file you can specify as the icon for your bundled application, this will be used as the app icon for example for the exe installer on Windows.
• Bundle Splash (PNG) - a PNG file you can specify as the splash logo when installing and updating your application. 
• App Logo (PNG) - a PNG file you can specify as the icon for the main application in your app, this will be used for example in the start menu in Windows.
• Additional Files and Folders - any additional resources you need to ship with your app that are not to be added to your JRE classpath.  These will be accessible from the working directory when your app is running (".").

The Optional tab also supports a number of further settings:

• Install Type - this determines where and how JWrapper chooses your application install folder.  CurrentUser will install JWrapper per the logged in user and will not share data between multiple users on the same machine.  AllUsers will install JWrapper in a central location to be accessed and used by all users on the computer.  If you plan to install a service then you should use this install type.  NoInstall will mean JWrapper uses a temporary folder for the install to avoid a persistent install on the machine.
• Strip allowed JRE files - if checked JWrapper will automatically omit certain allowed files from the JRE installation that is packaged with your application.  We recommend you leave this option off initially and then enable it when you are happy with how your app is building and running.  If you do change this setting you will need to delete the entire build folder for your application to force JWrapper to rebuild the JRE packages.
• Use JAR packing - if checked JWrapper will use pack200 on your jar files to minimise space.
• Windows UAC Elevation - if specified JWrapper will attempt to elevate your application on Windows when it is launched.
• Set JVM Memory to % RAM - if specified JWrapper will read the current system maximum (the total, not free) physical ram available and then set your app the specified percentage as a JRE heap memory limit (-Xmx).  For if you specify 25% then on a laptop with 8GB of ram your app will have a heap limit of 2GB, or if run on a computer with 16GB of ram it will have a heap limit of 4GB.  You can also specify a minimum and maximum heap limit that will override the %.
• JVM Options - JRE options that are to be used on the command line for all runs of your application (e.g. -Xms1m etc)

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The Enterprise tab in the JWrapper app allows you to configure some more advanced options for your application:

• Autoupdate URL - please see the autoupdating guide. 
• JWCrypt options - please see the JWCrypt guide and JWCrypt API reference.
• JWSign options - please see the JWSign guide.

​Certain configurations such as code signing require more complex information to be added such as full details and references for certificates.  In this case you can take a look at the guide that specifies the XML (e.g. Code Signing Guide) to use and then add that XML into the Custom tab in JWrapper.
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When running JWrapper from the command line or from a build script the entirety of JWrapper is packaged up in one JAR file.  You can find this jar file in our downloads area.

When you run JWrapper it will set up a few directories with resources it needs in the current directory.  These won't be downloaded from the internet, they are extracted and you can just ignore them.

Once you have a basic project created with the JWrapper App, you can run the jwrapper jar from the command line or from a build script and specify the jwrapper.xml it produces to run the build.

• java -jar jwrapper.jar jwrapper.xml

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