Do you have any good resources on how to use jlink/ jpackage with Clojure? Do you somehow embed it in a Uberjar or is the Uberjar part of the package besides the JRE?
You build your Clojure app as an uberjar, yes. Only gotcha here is to remember "-Dcljfx.skip-javafx-initialization=true" so the JFX thread doesn't get started during build, and I've had no problems using Clojure's direct linking either. You use jlink[1] to create a custom runtime JRE image (this isn't strictly necessary if you're deploying to machines with a JRE but it cuts down on moving parts and gives you more control). jpackage[2] then takes that runtime image and your uberjar and creates installers for Mac/Windows/Linux. Both are command line tools, and we just have GitHub Actions that cut new releases for each platform when we tag something with a new version.
Worth also keeping an eye on jDeploy[3] which adds extra goodies like auto updates, at the cost of some npm shenanigans. Not something I've played with yet though.
jDeploy developer here. No shenanigans, I swear. npm just simplified things. Some have expressed interest in adding self-hosting options, so I'll likely add support for that. It's open source too, so others could potentially add other hosting options also.
Yeah sorry I didn't mean anything underhanded, it's just a complication that made me reluctant to try it out initially. Honestly if you wanted to offer a whole turnkey commercial service with hosting and analytics and stuff I could imagine being drawn to that.
Thank you for the tips! At OrgPad, we currently use the system-wide JRE since we control the whole VM, this is not a huge issue. We build & deploy by just copying the (uber)jar and restarting the systemd service. Quite simple but I like to keep up with some other approaches and we never know, when we have to do a desktop app or something.
