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Asked: 2026-05-23T12:06:08+00:00

I’ve got a Java installer which deploys a binary to ProgramFiles\myapp. I’d like to

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I’ve got a Java installer which deploys a binary to “ProgramFiles”\myapp. I’d like to make it accessible from the command line.

Under Linux, the binary is deployed to /usr/local/bin/. Under Mac, I plan to deploy the binary to /usr/bin/.

How do I make a single command line binary accessible under Windows? Obviously I could send the binary to “WindowsDir”\System32… That would not be a clean way to do it though.

I think updating the user PATH environmental variable is a good option. How would I make it persist after reboot though?

edit:
I don’t want to hear it can’t be done as has been said in two answers so far. That’s a wrong answer and should be voted down….

C:\>echo %PATH%
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows Live;C:\WINDOWS\system32
C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem;C:\Program Files\QuickTime\QTSystem\

Obviously Apple figured it out because QucikTime is in my path.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I don’t believe that java can actually modify environment variables. See this post about that: How do I set environment variables from Java?

    The not clean answer is to use ProcessBuilder.
    As the OP pointed out, calling the windows set command like this set path=<your path>;%path% only modifies the variable in your process’s environment.

    A better way is to modify the registry with the reg command. The correct registry key is outlined in this Wikipedia Page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_variable

    Through the Windows Registry this is done changing the values under HKCU\Environment (for user specific variables) and HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment (for System variables).

    Also, if you aren’t targeting Windows XP and earlier, you can try the setx command which was added in Windows Vista: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc755104(WS.10).aspx

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