Creating Jars

[freesoft_2000]

Hi everyone,

I have an application that i need to distribute as a jar but i have no idea how to create the jar archive as well as something called the manifest file. Basically i have only one class and the main is in that class itself. The path of the of the the file i want to archive is as follows:

C://wt//ter//Jhutto.class

and the path of my of my jar.exe is as follows:

C://java_1.4//bin//jar.exe

Could someone also explain(in detail if possible) to me or direct me to an informative website that explains what the manifest file is all about and also how to write a manifest file.

Any help is greatly appreciated

Thank You

Yours Sincerely

Richard West

[Belisarius]

I've only used Ant to create jars before, so I'm not familiar on how to do it from scratch. But Sun does have a tutorial on jars.

[freesoft_2000]

Hi everyone,

I have to ask you something belisarius what is ant? I have been to their website but still do not understand what they are talking about. This ant you talk about how do i use it to create jars. Could you explain in detail if possible

Yours Sincerely

Richard West

[Belisarius]

Ant is like "make", only for Java programs. It allows you to create complex compiles, and will also only compile what is new. For instance, I use it to keep my source files and class files seperate in all my projects. I also create jars in what would otherwise be a massive headache, as I need to include other jars within the created jar (you have to unpack and include the class files, you can't simply include a jar within a jar).

The manual is a bit confusing, but if you stick with it you can usually figure out what you need to know. Here is the manual page on creating a jar in Ant, and it includes examples.

[kaeli69]

The jar command can create the manifest for you.
You don't need to use Ant.

From my command line...

Usage: jar {ctxu}[vfm0Mi] [jar-file] [manifest-file] [-C dir] files ...
Options:
-c create new archive
-t list table of contents for archive
-x extract named (or all) files from archive
-u update existing archive
-v generate verbose output on standard output
-f specify archive file name
-m include manifest information from specified manifest file
-0 store only; use no ZIP compression
-M do not create a manifest file for the entries
-i generate index information for the specified jar files
-C change to the specified directory and include the following file
If any file is a directory then it is processed recursively.
The manifest file name and the archive file name needs to be specified
in the same order the 'm' and 'f' flags are specified.

Example 1: to archive two class files into an archive called classes.jar:
jar cvf classes.jar Foo.class Bar.class
Example 2: use an existing manifest file 'mymanifest' and archive all the
files in the foo/ directory into 'classes.jar':
jar cvfm classes.jar mymanifest -C foo/ .

From http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutor...ics/build.html

This command will generate a compressed JAR file and place it in the current directory. The command will also generate a default manifest file for the JAR archive.

See more here:
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutor.../manifest.html