EXE Proxy

This program serves as a proxy for another command line program. There are two versions of the program available:

• simple (20 KB binary)
• with JavaScript (270 KB binary)

EXE Proxy uses semantic versioning (http://semver.org/). The versions before 1.0 will change the interface incompatibly so please use an exact version number as dependency.

Usage scenarios:

• enable access to a command line program under another (possibly shorter) name.
• store many copies of EXE proxy in one directory pointing to command line utilities on the computer and adding only this directory to the PATH environment variable. This would avoid reaching the maximum length for PATH (2048 characters) and making it very complicated while still be able to run all programs without specifying the directory where they reside.
• make a GUI executable usable from the command line too. Normally cmd.exe does not wait for GUI executables to end but returns immediately. EXE Proxy does not differentiate between GUI and non-GUI programs and always waits for the target process to end.
• launcher for Java or other programming languages that do not create executables by default.
• writing Windows service in Java

1. The simple version passes all arguments as-is to the target program. The return code of the target program will be returned as exit code by EXE Proxy. The path and file name of the target executable are stored directly as a resource in a copy of the EXE Proxy. During the start EXE Proxy reads the resource string and uses it to find the target executable. The resource string can either contain an absolute file name or a file name without slashes or backslashes. In the latter case the target executable should reside in the same directory as the EXE Proxy itself.

In order to change the target executable resource entry you could start the EXE Proxy with the parameter "exeproxy-copy":

exeproxy.exe exeproxy-copy <output file name> <target executable name> [--copy-icons] [--copy-version] [--copy-manifest]

The second parameter should be the name of the output exe file where a copy of the EXE Proxy will be stored. The third parameter should either contain an absolute path to the target executable or the name of the target executable without slashes or backslashes if the target executable resides in the same directory as the EXE Proxy.

If the parameter --copy-icons is present, all icons and icon groups are copied making the executable icon look exactly as in the target executable.

If the parameter --copy-version is present, the version information is copied.

If the parameter --copy-manifest is present, the application XML manifest is copied.

2. The second version reads the JavaScript from the file with the same name as the executable and the extension .js and executes it using the Duktape library (https://duktape.org/).

You can still use the "exeproxy-copy" command from above to embedd the icons and version information from the target executable, but it is not executed automatically (if not specified in the JavaScript).

You can create a Java based Windows service using JNA. See https://github.com/java-native-access/jna/tree/master/contrib/ntservice for more details. The Windows command line utility "sc.exe" can be used to register and unregister the service.

In the JavaScript code are also defined:

• os.totalmem() - total physical system memory in bytes
• process.argv - executable parameters as an array of strings. The value at the index 0 is the name of the executable used on the command line.
• process.argv0 - executable name including path
• child_process.execSync(command) - executes a program and returns the exit code
• process.exit(ec) - exits the program with the specified exit code
• process.loadJVM(options) - start Java Virtual Machine in the current process
  • options.jvmDLL - path to the jvm.dll
  • options.jvmOptions - JVM options (the same as arguments for java.exe) as an array of strings See https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/guides/jni/spec/invocation.html for more details.
• process.javaCallMain(className, args) - execute "main" method in the specified Java class. The JVM must be loaded first.
  • className - name of the main class
  • args - argument for "public static void main(String[])" as an array of strings

Example JavaScript file:

console.log('os.totalmem = ' + os.totalmem());
console.log('exe = ' + process.argv0);

console.log(process.argv.length);
for (var i = 0; i < process.argv.length; i++) {
    console.log("JS argument " + i + " = " + process.argv[i]);
}

process.loadJVM({
    jvmDLL: "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Java\\jre7\\bin\\client\\jvm.dll", 
    jvmOptions: ["-Djava.class.path=C:\\Users\\IEUser\\Documents\\exe-proxy"],
});

process.javaCallMain("tests.Demo", ["first", "second"]);

var ec = child_process.execSync("C:\\msys64\\mingw32\\bin\\addr2line.exe params");
console.log('exit code = ' + ec);

process.exit(200);