[MemoryHungry]

I suggest that you add support for setting parameters and environment variables through .ini files that are read automatically when the application launches (if they are present). An example for this functionality are installers created by Advanced Installer (the .ini files have the same name as the application and reside in the same directory).

I understand flags can be set using a .bat file to launch the application. However, this leads to two different ways of launching the application. It's fine for development use, but average users would often be confused.

We found that .ini files have been very useful to work around problems discovered after product launch. Over the past years, we have encountered several problems which were easily solved by adding flags to .ini files. Two examples are graphics acceleration problems that some users experienced, and Java bugs like the user.home bug. Typically, this issues were limited to specific system configurations, and therefore only discovered after deployment. Modifying a line in a .ini file, for example to turn 2D acceleration off, was a nice workaround that enabled users to be up an running again with minimal delays.

There are other uses for .ini files, too, like setting memory parameters or flags like headless, where .ini files would be an elegant solution.

[snowman]

Yes, we had thought of this ourselves some time ago, so I have added your feature request to the respective entry in our issue tracker.

In fact, that entry lists some other options, one of which is already partially implemented. Specifically, it will be possible to create an executable with the java launcher command-line syntax, so you would not only be able to override the hard-wired settings, but also select the main class, e.g.:

    MyApp -Xmx512m -Dsome.property com.myapp.Server
    MyApp com.myapp.Client localhost

However, due to tight schedule I cannot guarantee that this feature will find its way into the next release.

[MemoryHungry]

What are the chances that .ini file support makes it into version 7? This is still an important feature for us, we often encounter computer-specific problems that could most easily be solved with .ini files.