I don't know if you've posted in other forums, but Java cannot give you the things you are looking for... that's the job of the operating system itself, and that generally means you need to write it...

I'm not sure I'm following the details of the problems you are having, but more generally, have a look at the [new] "ProcessBuilder" class in the standard java API docs. It gives you better control...

What's the right way to do conditional execution without resorting to goto-ing a target with a depends= and if= clause?

Unfortunately, I think that's really the way it works. I write and maintain...