java web start alternative [closed]

Question

We're looking for an alternative to Java web start that effectively does the same thing, just better implemented. We're having massive trouble with it. We have a few offices of XP desktops, all slightly different and so far only a handful have worked without serious tweaking. Problems are to do with not playing nicely with the proxy settings (using direct connection in Java control panel allows it to work), refusing to run when params like "-Xmx" are set but running fine when they aren't (until it runs out of memory) and other odd problems that we can't fix.

The way web start works is exactly what we want, i.e. connecting to a server that has the app, downloading anything that's changed, keeping a cache of jars, etc. Other teams here use 'clickonce' for their C# apps and it does effectively the same thing but seems to be less trouble.

I'm convinced we're not the only people to have run into this but searching around doesn't really show any alternatives. We've looked into writing a stub local application that is essentially just a URLClassLoader that loads up our app over the network on the fly but unfortunately that's too slow from other offices. Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

Update

In case anyone is curious as to what eventually happened, we gave webstart another month or so but continued to run into problems so we implemented our own version. It's basically just a stub that has a URL class loader that you point at a webserver. It's < 200 lines of code and it has been working perfectly for months. It's not ideal but until someone improves webstart we'll stick with it.

Update 2018

So, several years later and I'm working on a new project with the same problem. Instead of writing our own webstart implementation this time we're using getdown. We've found it to be a vast improvement over web start and it's been working really well for us.

Alexi

I think you should do a write up on the actual problems you have, as I believe your best venue right now is to solve them, instead of migrating to another tehcnology like Eclipse update sites. – Buckinghamshire

At the moment we're just fixing the issues one-by-one but I thought there might be an alternative that wasn't so troublesome. However it is encouraging that people's advice has been to stick with web start, I guess it must work for some people. – Alexi

How about Java RMI? Make a GUI app that relies on a set of classes and fetch their implementation remotely from a central server somewhere. There is a Java SE trail on the topic. – Vichy

@Martin Andersson you are kidding using the Java RMI on internet? Even for LANs its not interesting, that's why there's so much good alternatives developed. – Burdett

We're in the same boat and are trying to abandon JNLP/JWS. Not really a fan of writing our own loader, but may have to. Disappointed to hear that you never found a substitute. – Formality

Answer 1

My company is also experiencing webstart pain especially with JRE 1.6 update 19 and 20. Our problems revolve around the Mixed Code security warning. (everything is properly signed and the problem is intermittent)

Anyhoo, I stumbled across getdown by threerings. I haven't tried it yet, but seems promising https://github.com/threerings/getdown/wiki

Godsey

We just came across that too, fingers crossed it's what we're looking for. It's also encouraging that threerings started with web start and eventually gave up and wrote an alternative. – Alexi

The Mixed Code problem is really annoying. – Buckinghamshire

I know that around JDK1.6_20 or so there was a major Twitter bug that was found and it resulted in a SSL change in the JDK. I don't remember the details, but if I remember correctly, it might be related to cert validation or hostname verifier. I think if you scan the release notes you might find something to give you a clue. – Ayr

Answer 2

I use JWS extensively in my company. The ONLY real problem that I've seen with JWS occurs only when you try to run JWS from cache AND your client's machine has just upgraded to a newer version of Java. The application will fail to launch with a "Unable to launch", "cache file not found" error or something similar.

There are two ways that I use to fix this problem: I either clear the cache and have them reinstall the app, or I simply have them click on the URL again from my website (easiest for my users). In both cases, the problem fixes itself. This would explain why several developers here never see this problem, most likely because their users always click on a URL instead of the installed launcher.

As a workaround, and in some of my mission critical apps, I use either of the following inside a script:

java -jar netx.jar -jnlp http://url/to/my/launch.jnlp

or

javaws http://url/to/my/launch.jnlp

where netx is a third party library.

It is not the prettiest solution, but for me these work 100% of the time.

Now, if I could only figure out how to get the desktop shortcuts from not going to hell... but that's a discussion for another time.

Amara

Do you have enough actual experience with netx to give an evaluation of it? – Buckinghamshire

Looks like NetX was abandoned around 2013. – Gemagemara

Answer 3

I find all your probles quite strange. i've worked during a certain time in a company distributing its trading software using JWS, and it always worked really fine. Have you considering taking a look at the unofficial Java web start FAQ before dropping the whole technology ?

Wadding

Getting a support contract might be an idea... (Disclosure: I work for Oracle.) – Ritualism

Note: The linked FAQ is very old. There was a major overhaul of JWS in Java 6 update 10 from Sun. – Buckinghamshire

We have been using the FAQ and we're using java 6 update 20 in order to have all the new improvements. The problem is that there are so many issues and there shouldn't be, it should be quite straight forward. The choice was to keep fixing the problems one-by-one as we have been doing, with no idea how long to keep going, or to drop the technology and go for something else. – Alexi

@Dave, what issues have you seen? – Buckinghamshire

Thorbjorn, what do you think of this faq? – Vichy

@MartinAndersson it seems pretty old too. Mentions for the supported platforms: "Sun Microsystems provides versions for Windows 95/98/NT/2000, Solaris Operating Environment (SPARC and Intel editions) and Linux/i486. Macintosh provides a version for their OS X release."... – Buckinghamshire

I've found a number of problems with JNLP over the years, and have finally reached my limit of tolerance with it. Between the caching issue where new updates can overwrite running programs, parameter passing being broken (7U45), and deprecation of self-signed certificates, I've had enough. :-) – Formality

@BrianKnoblauch and what have you chosen to replace it? – Buckinghamshire

Since it's for internal use, we're going old school and providing a file share that people can drag a copy of onto their desktop and then scripts to execute it in the various ways that JNLP parameters were used before. It's ugly, it's clunky, but no more cert errors and the startup times are drastically slashed compared to JNLP. – Formality

Answer 4

we also use JWS a lot and since around 1-6_19 it realy started to be a pain. Some apps started up 1-6_19 others didn't then we updated to 1-6_20 and it was sort of the other way around. Then update to 1-6_21/2/3/4 and problems only changing. We might give up. It looks like the development team since Oracle took over changed. Otherwise there is no other explanation to make JWS worse then better.

Statius

Answer 5

GetDown seems to be flaky as well. I just tried some of the game websites they advertise as examples in action. They all failed to load in my Firefox. Maybe my Java to Firefox integration is to blame? I've got JRE 7 32-bit installed after JDK 1.6 64-bit.

In general Web Start problems and poor user experience many times are related to the way Java was installed on the users machine. On Windows I noticed that if you install older version of Java after newer (expecting both will co-exist), I start getting problems running applets and WS applications.

Weaverbird

I agree with you. I have never succeeded in installing a software with GetDown. It doesn't do what it claims to. It doesn't work even with a single JDK installed on the system. – Chiaki