Project Initium: Programmatic Deployment

TL;DR: The design and use of a Java Web Start framework called Initium, which generates a jar file that minimizes the number of included classes by performing a static class dependency analysis, and prompts the programmer for security parameters that enable the programmatic signing of the jar file, for the purpose of authentication.

Abstract: This paper describes the design and use of a Java Web Start framework called Initium Initium generates a jar file that minimizes the number of included classes by performing a static class dependency analysis It then prompts the programmer for security parameters that enable the programmatic signing of the jar file, for the purpose of authentication Initium generates a local Java Network Launch Protocol file (JNLP file) for the purpose of testing, as well as a remote JNLP file, for deployment Finally, Initium programmatically uploads both the JNLP and jar files to the web server, to complete the deployment cycle The signing of a jar file enables web start clients to execute a Java application in a trusted and distributed manner Trusted jar files can be executed outside of the “sandbox” and thus be given access to files, or be able to open connections to hosts other than the web host on the target system Initium is a Latin word that means: “at the start” It is part of an on-going project at both the DocJava Inc skunk works and Fairfield University