Java Service Steward

Runs, controls, and monitors Java applications as Windows services.

Java Service Steward is a Windows service host for Java applications, written in Rust and released under Apache-2.0 OR MIT. It installs a Java application as a Windows service, launches and supervises the JVM over an authenticated loopback channel, restarts it when it fails or stops responding, rotates its log, and provides thread and heap dumps on demand. It reads the widely deployed wrapper.conf configuration format and follows its command-line conventions, so existing installations can switch to it in place. It ships as one executable (wrapper.exe) plus a small Java 8-compatible bridge JAR, with no native library, no JNI and no installer.

• Source and README: https://github.com/jayyanez/java-service-steward
• Downloads: https://github.com/jayyanez/java-service-steward/releases (zip with wrapper.exe and wrapper.jar, SHA256SUMS, CycloneDX SBOM and a Sigstore build-provenance attestation)
• Crate: https://crates.io/crates/java-service-steward (cargo install java-service-steward builds wrapper.exe from source)
• Introduction article: Java Service Steward, an open-source host for Java Windows services that reads wrapper.conf

Documentation

• Compatibility with the wrapper.conf format: commands, every configuration property with its support status, integration methods, log format, service semantics, known limits.
• Migrating an existing installation: in-place replacement, rollback, properties that are ignored, launcher mapping, API migration.
• Thread and heap dumps.
• Architecture.
• Testing and performance baseline.
• Release process and supply-chain artifacts: how releases are built, how to verify a download.
• Versioning policy.
• Provenance: how compatibility was achieved and the rules contributors follow.
• Interoperability research notes.

Trademarks and affiliation

Java Service Steward is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Tanuki Software, Ltd. “Java Service Wrapper” and “Tanuki Software” are names of Tanuki Software, Ltd. and are used here only to describe compatibility with the wrapper.conf configuration format and command-line conventions of that product. Java Service Steward does not contain, bundle, or require any Tanuki Software code or binaries.