my toolbox won't stay open

i have several programs (classes with a main method), and for them i want to build another "toolbox" program (jpanel with buttons that when clicked on, launch the other programs). when these other programs are terminated however, the whole toolbox will close (since a system.exit was called).

i wish to avoid additional code to my programs that would let them close when launched independently, but skip system.exit calls when launched from the toolbox and do something else instead. this seems messy and i'm sure there's a better way.

how can i have one program launch another, so that when the child closes by system.exit, the parent remains open?

[670 byte] By [hanischafa] at [2007-10-2 5:45:10]