Creating a Bundle Jar with Ant
I'm Using Ant to Build Some Java Projects. in Some, I've Got a Lib/ Directory, Which Contains External Dependencies, in the Form on Jar Files. During the...
I'm using Ant to build some Java projects.
In some, I've got a lib/ directory, which contains external dependencies, in the form on JAR files.
During the build, I create a bundled jar, that contains the project's code, alongside the dependencies, by adding to the bundle jar file a zipfileset for each of the jars in the lib/ directory.
The problem is, that every time I add a jar, or change names, I need to remember to update the build.xml file, as I couldn't find a way for adding those zipfilesets in an automatic manner that will include all jars in a certain pattern (e.g. lib/*.jar).
Is there a better way for doing this?
I've considered writing my own Ant Task for this, or using Groovy's ant API to do this programmatically, but was wondering if there's a way for doing this using "vanilla" ant.
4 Answers
In my target, I have something like this:
<jar destfile="${store.dir}/temp_final.jar" filesetmanifest="skip">
<zipgroupfileset dir="dist" includes="*.jar"/>
<zipgroupfileset dir="dist/lib" includes="*.jar" excludes=""/>
<manifest>
<attribute name="Main-Class" value="${main.class}"/>
<attribute name="Class-Path" value="${mf.classpath}"/>
</manifest>
</jar>
And here is how I build my classpath:
<path id="build.classpath">
<fileset dir="${basedir}/">
<include name="${lib.dir}/*.jar"/>
</fileset>
</path>
<pathconvert property="mf.classpath" pathsep=" ">
<path refid="build.classpath"/>
<mapper>
<chainedmapper>
<flattenmapper/>
<globmapper from="*.jar" to="lib/*.jar"/>
</chainedmapper>
</mapper>
</pathconvert>
mf.classpath is used from the package target posted above. This part I copied from somewhere else, so I'm not all that familiar with it.
Quick edit. Javac needs to know about those jars too.
<path id="jars">
<fileset dir="${lib.dir}" includes="**/*.jar"/>
</path>
<target name="compile">
<mkdir dir="${build.dir}"/>
<javac srcdir="${src.dir}" destdir="${build.dir}" classpathref="jars" debug="on"/>
</target>
Use a zipgroupfileset. For example:
<target name="jar">
<jar destfile="foo.jar" basedir="${dir.classes}">
<zipgroupfileset dir="lib" includes="*.jar"/>
</jar>
</target>
The zipgroupfileset is documented with the Zip task.
For those of you using NetBeans here is how you can create JAR archive with libraries bundled using zipgroupfileset:
<target name="-post-jar">
<property name="store.jar.name" value="MyJarName"/>
<property name="store.dir" value="dist"/>
<property name="store.jar" value="${store.dir}/${store.jar.name}.jar"/>
<echo message="Packaging ${application.title} into a single JAR at ${store.jar}"/>
<jar destfile="${store.dir}/temp_final.jar" filesetmanifest="skip">
<zipgroupfileset dir="dist" includes="*.jar"/>
<zipgroupfileset dir="dist/lib" includes="*.jar"/>
<manifest>
<attribute name="Main-Class" value="${main.class}"/>
</manifest>
</jar>
<zip destfile="${store.jar}">
<zipfileset src="${store.dir}/temp_final.jar"
excludes="META-INF/*.SF, META-INF/*.DSA, META-INF/*.RSA"/>
</zip>
<delete file="${store.dir}/temp_final.jar"/>
<delete dir="${store.dir}/lib"/>
<delete file="${store.dir}/README.TXT"/>
</target>
I've added this target definition to the end of build.xml file. Target name is -post-jar.
Here's an simple example of an ant target that will create a jar (named test.jar) that includes all jar files under the lib directory. Maybe this will solve your problem?
<target name="jar">
<jar destfile="test.jar">
<fileset dir="lib/" includes="**/*.jar" />
</jar>
</target>
Alexander Ross has covered the video game industry for a decade, writing deep dives on game design, esports tournaments, VR developments, and gaming culture.
