How to Turn a Spring Boot JAR into a One‑Click Windows Installer (EXE)

Preparation

Before starting you need three things:

A bug‑free, runnable JAR file of your Spring Boot application.

exe4j – a tool that converts a JAR into an EXE.

Inno Setup – a tool that packages the EXE together with its dependencies into a Windows installer.

Creating the EXE with exe4j

Open exe4j and choose Java to EXE . Click Next , then specify the output name and directory. Continue clicking Next to select the launch mode and enable both 32‑bit and 64‑bit compatibility.

In the VM parameters field add -Dfile.encoding=utf-8. Configure the bundled JRE by selecting the local JRE folder and choosing Client VM . Finish the wizard to generate demo.exe on the desktop.

Packaging with Inno Setup

Launch Inno Setup, choose File → New , and fill in the application name and version. Accept the default settings for most pages, then add the previously generated demo.exe as the main file.

On the Files page, add the local JRE directory using a script line such as:

Source: "YourLocalJREPath*"; DestDir: "{app}{#MyJreName}"; Flags: ignoreversion recursesubdirs createallsubdirs

Proceed through the remaining wizard pages, keeping defaults, and finally compile the script to produce setup.exe.

Run the generated installer; it will copy the EXE and bundled JRE, create a shortcut, and complete the installation. The resulting program can be distributed to users who do not have a JDK installed.