Commons-launcher eliminates the need for a batch or shell script to launch a Java class. Some situations where elimination of a batch or shell script may be desirable are:

* You want to avoid having to determining where certain application paths are e.g. your application's home directory, etc. Determining this dynamically in a Windows batch scripts is very tricky on some versions of Windows or when softlinks are used on Unix platforms. * You want to avoid having to handle native file and path separators or native path quoting issues. * You need to enforce certain system properties e.g. java.endorsed.dirs when running with JDK 1.4. * You want to allow users to pass in custom JVM arguments or system properties without having to parse and reorder arguments in your script. This can be tricky and/or messy in batch and shell scripts. * You want to bootstrap system properties from a configuration file instead hard-coding them in your batch and shell scripts. * You want to provide localized error messages which is very tricky to do in batch and shell scripts.