After reviewing feature request #127, I tried to use the head.o attached to that ticket.
When I tried to put the path element in the jre element of the config element of my ant script, ant complained that the jre element doesn't support the path element. I tried putting the path element elsewhere in my ant script (i.e., within the config element) to no avail.
It looks like there's some missing glue between launch4j.jar and ant (possibly AntJre.java) because when I execute this:
java -jar launch4j config.xml
then I get no error. The resulting executable seems to work fine for a variety of use cases that are all discussed in feature request #127.
This leads me to believe launch4j.jar is ok but AntJre.java is not. My only workaround is to significantly change my ant build script, creating a config.xml file.
I should have mentioned I applied the head.o to version 3.12 of launch4j.
Looks like I missed the discussion topic that shows how to do this by adding the path attribute to the jre element.
Please close this ticket.