EDIT I don't want to use Java Web Start I've got a Java application that I'd like to run with different VM parameters depending on the amount of memory the system it is launched on has. For example if the machine has 1 GB of memory or less I'd like to pass "-Xmx200m" and "-Xmx400m" if it has 2 GB and "-Xmx800m" if it has 8 GB (these are just examples). Is there a portable way to do this? I've tried having a first tiny Java app (hence portable) that determines the amount of memory available and then launches a new Java app but I don't think this is very clean. As of now I've written Bash shell scripts that invoke the Java app with the correct parameters depending on the config but it only works on Linux on OS X. What is the correct way to solve this? Would application packager package ;) help ?