I want to open a new terminal window, which will run a certain command upon opening. It preferably needs to be a real native window, and I don't mind writing different code for linux/osx/windows.
I'm assuming an emulated terminal would work, as long as it supports everything a real terminal would do and isn't just printing lines of output from a command.
Prior to Java 18, the following code could be used for Windows:
// windows only Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("cmd /c start cmd.exe"); p.waitFor(); However, this method was deprecated in Java 18. So it may be worth looking at the following instead:
// windows only ProcessBuilder bp = new ProcessBuilder("cmd /c start cmd.exe").start(); 
Opening an actual terminal window will definitely require different code for each OS. For Mac, you want something like:
Runtime.getRuntime().exec("/usr/bin/open -a Terminal /path/to/the/executable"); 
-a states the application you want to use to open a file – in this case it is terminal. For a word document it would be -a Word /path/to/word/document.doc You surround apps with spaces with quotations. -a "Sublime Text" path/to/code/file.jsI've used this on Ubuntu(X11 Desktop) 10.04 ~ 14.04, and other Debian distro's. Works fine; although, you may consider using Java's ProcessBuilder.
// GNU/Linux -- example Runtime.getRuntime().exec("/usr/bin/x-terminal-emulator --disable-factory -e cat README.txt"); // --disable-factory Do not register with the activation nameserver, do not re-use an active terminal // -e Execute the argument to this option inside the terminal. 
x-terminal-emulator works directly without the path prefix "/user/bin", is it also true for other distros?You need information about the OS you're running. For that you could use code like this:
public static void main(String[] args) { String nameOS = "os.name"; String versionOS = "os.version"; String architectureOS = "os.arch"; System.out.println("\n The information about OS"); System.out.println("\nName of the OS: " + System.getProperty(nameOS)); System.out.println("Version of the OS: " + System.getProperty(versionOS)); System.out.println("Architecture of THe OS: " + System.getProperty(architectureOS)); } Then for each OS you would have to use different invocations as described by Bala R and Mike Baranczak
for Java to use Windows taskkill, try this:
try { // start notepad before running this app Process p1 = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("cmd /c start cmd.exe"); // launch terminal first p1.waitFor(); Process p2 = Runtime.getRuntime().exec( "taskkill /F /IM notepad.exe" ); // now send taskkill command p2.waitFor(); Process p3 = Runtime.getRuntime().exec( "taskkill /F /IM cmd.exe" ); // finally, close terminal p3.waitFor(); } catch (IOException ex) { System.out.println(ex); } catch (InterruptedException ex) { Logger.getLogger(RT2_JFrame.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex); } // close try-catch-catch you need to have the cmd terminal running before taskkill works.
