How does JetBrains create .exe files for their IDE's?

Question

So as far as I'm aware, JetBrains mostly uses Java (swing) for their IDE's.

But I noticed all their IDE's have a .exe, so I was wondering, where/how does their JDK gets executed. Especially since the JDK is not even showing up in the task manager.

I tried myself to create a exe and start the JDK as subprocess but even then the task manger does show the JDK running as separate app.

How are they doing it did they modify the JDK to achieve this?

Answer 1

JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA based products use the custom launcher to load the JVM on Windows. It's open source and you can investigate how it works by analyzing the WinLauncher source code in the GitHub repository. It loads jvm.dll dynamically.

Many years ago we used a third-party solution (EXE4J), but switched to the custom launcher for more flexibility and to make IntelliJ IDEA Community 100% open source.