Tools: Application launcher

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What is CTK Application Launcher ?

CTK Application launcher is a lightweight open-source utility allowing to set environment before starting a real application. The launcher is available on Linux, Windows and MacOSX.

How does CTK Application Launcher works ?

The launcher looks for a setting file where the path of the real application and its associated environment variable are reported. While setting the environment and loading the real application, it can also display a splash screen.

Settings file location

The launcher successively looks for a setting file located either in the current directory or in bin and lib subdirectories. The setting file should match the following pattern <LAUNCHERNAME>LauncherSettings.ini

For example:

 /home/jchris/Projects/AwesomeApp
 /home/jchris/Projects/bin/AwesomeApp-real
 /home/jchris/Projects/bin/AwesomeAppLauncherSettings.ini
 /home/jchris/Projects/lib/libFoo.so

Setting file description

The setting file should have the following format:

[General]
launcherSplashImagePath=bin/Splash.png
launcherSplashScreenHideDelayMs=1000

[Application]
path=bin/AwesomeApp-real
arguments=--multithreading-enabled

[Paths]
1\path=./bin
size=1

[LibraryPaths]
1\path=./lib
size=1

[EnvironmentVariables]
FOO_DIRS=<APPLAUNCHER_DIR>/lib<PATHSEP>/usr/local/lib

Note that the special strings <PATHSEP>, <APPLAUNCHER_NAME> and <APPLAUNCHER_DIR> will be expanded by the launcher to match the current context.

Launcher command line arguments

As described below, the launcher also provides a broad set of command line arguments.

jchris@karakoram:~/Projects/CTK-AppLauncher-Debug/bin $ ./CTKAppLauncher --launcher-help
Usage
  CTKAppLauncher [options]

Options
  --launcher-help                Display help
  --launcher-verbose             Verbose mode
  --launch                       Specify the application to launch
  --launcher-detach              Launcher will NOT wait for the application to finish
  --launcher-no-splash           Hide launcher splash
  --launcher-timeout             Specify the time in second before the launcher kills the application. -1 means no timeout (default: -1)
  --launcher-generate-template   Generate an example of setting file

Why should you use CTK Application Launcher ?

• Very easy to configure
• Standalone executable
• Available on Windows, linux and MacOSX
• Thoroughly tested

Links for Developers

Build Instructions	Source Code	Source Code's Quality Dashboard