jLuger.de - Fun with Java Web Start

This week I wanted to get information out of a program started via Web Start. Why Web Start? Because I've found no other way to get JAWS recognizing my application. First I wanted to do remote debug of the application. I've placed the remote debug switch
-Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,server=y,suspend=n,address=8001
in the java-vm-args attribute. Well it didn't work for me.

Then I've added tons of print statements (the old school way of debugging). The result was that the Java Console was flooded. Now I've searched for a way to log the traces. Fortunately the user Ced found a solution on stackoverflow.com. After activating tracing in the settings the output was really written in <User Application Data Folder>\Sun\Java\Deployment\log but it seems that there is a limit about the file sizing. A lot of the log information were lost.

I did some more testing and trying and while searching for various ideas I've stumbled over http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5074838/java-web-start-javaws-command-line-arguments. There Oleg Pavliv explains how to write a batch file that imitates the javaws executable. I've tried to change the call to javaw to java so that I can log the output but it didn't work either. Instead the flags about remote debugging started were recognized by the VM and I could do some remote debugging.

Another cool thing about the batch file is, that it opens a path for some research why JAWS will work with Web Start but not with my direct calls of java/javaw.