Multi-Alarms

Multi Alarms is a Java app (using Swing) to show multiple alarms that can be set to run simultaneously.

Each alarm counts down and plays a sound to alert the user.

Background

I wrote MultiAlarms in 2002 for a cinema projectionist who needed multiple alarms in order to keep track of multiple cinema movies stopping and starting - since his job was dealing with film reels in a theatre with 5 screens.

I then found the software generally useful but it lay forgotten in the code-cupboard of my machine as I moved on to other things. So I've created this repository for posterity.

The original code from 2002 is in the git history. But I later made some changes for modern machine support and to fix deprecated code. And later again, to incorporate Java 17 language features and improvements. It was a great way to get back up to speed with Java > 2, by starting with an old project like this.

Build & Run

Requires a JDK on PATH (Java 17 or later). The Makefile drives plain javac and jar, so it works on any OS with make.

make            # compile and build dist/MultiAlarms.jar
make run        # build and launch the GUI
make clean      # remove build output

To build against a specific JDK rather than the one on PATH:

make JAVA_HOME=/path/to/jdk

macOS: if javac is an old version

Homebrew's openjdk is keg-only, so it is not on PATH and the system Java wrappers can't see it. Register it once and javac picks it up:

sudo ln -sfn $(brew --prefix openjdk)/libexec/openjdk.jdk \
             /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/openjdk.jdk

The resulting dist/MultiAlarms.jar is a self-contained runnable jar (the kunststoff look-and-feel library is bundled in), so it can also be launched directly with java -jar dist/MultiAlarms.jar or by double-click.