B4J Question [B4X][Macros] Is there a way to prevent a helper .jar from timing out and closing automatically?

William Lancee · Apr 22, 2026

I have a app that compares a current sub showing in the IDE to the same one that is part of another app or another version of it.
The idea is to see what the differences there are and what changes I should make.

This works nicely but after about 20 seconds (while I am still thinking) it closes and I have to restart it by clicking the button on top of IDE.
Unfortunately It starts at the beginning - I can fix that but I rather not make it state dependent - and I have to navigate to where I was.
This timeout occurs for both B4J and B4A.

I have set then MainForm.AlwaysOnTop = True. It doesn't stop the timeout.

William Lancee · Thursday at 4:28 PM

I still get "Completed. Exit code: -1" after 30 seconds, but the app stays alive.
I used this .bat file:

B4X:

set javaLocation=%2\..
CD %javaLocation%\bin
javaw --module-path %javaLocation%\javafx\lib --add-modules ALL-MODULE-PATH -jar "C:\Additional\SubComparator.jar" %1

And the revised macro:

B4X:

#Macro: Title, Sub Comparator, ide://run?File=%ADDITIONAL%\SubComparator.bat&Args="%PROJECT% %JAVABIN%"

I suppose the difference is javaw?

Erel · Thursday at 5:57 AM

Is the macro starting a UI app?

If not then you can probably workaround the timeout by calling it with cmd.

William Lancee · Thursday at 4:28 PM

I still get "Completed. Exit code: -1" after 30 seconds, but the app stays alive.
I used this .bat file:

B4X:

set javaLocation=%2\..
CD %javaLocation%\bin
javaw --module-path %javaLocation%\javafx\lib --add-modules ALL-MODULE-PATH -jar "C:\Additional\SubComparator.jar" %1

And the revised macro:

B4X:

#Macro: Title, Sub Comparator, ide://run?File=%ADDITIONAL%\SubComparator.bat&Args="%PROJECT% %JAVABIN%"

I suppose the difference is javaw?

Erel · Sunday at 6:03 AM

Try it with:

B4X:

set javaLocation=%2\..
CD %javaLocation%\bin
start "" javaw --module-path %javaLocation%\javafx\lib --add-modules ALL-MODULE-PATH -jar "C:\Additional\SubComparator.jar" %1

William Lancee · Sunday at 2:39 PM

That works - no "Completed. Exit code: -1".

Thanks. Now I have to look up what start "" does.

Erel · Sunday at 2:42 PM

Starts another program and doesn't wait for it to complete. You can probably skip the batch file and create a (long) macro that calls start with all these arguments (though there is nothing bad with a batch file).

B4J Question [B4X][Macros] Is there a way to prevent a helper .jar from timing out and closing automatically?

William Lancee

Well-Known Member

William Lancee

Erel

B4X founder

William Lancee

Well-Known Member

Erel

B4X founder

William Lancee

Well-Known Member

Erel

B4X founder

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B4J Question [B4X][Macros] Is there a way to prevent a helper .jar from timing out and closing automatically?

William Lancee

Well-Known Member

Erel

B4X founder

William Lancee

Well-Known Member

Erel

B4X founder

William Lancee

Well-Known Member

Erel

B4X founder

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