Road to create executable jar using ant build tool

In this post I explained the procedure to create executable jar file using ant.

You need to create java project using eclipse , create a lib folder in your eclipse project.

Here is example of a java class having main method.

 package com.test;

 import org.junit.Assert;

 public class VerifyString {

   public boolean matchString(String str1, String str2){

      if(str1.equals(str2)){

          System.out.println("both strings are equal");

          return true;

      }

      else {

          System.out.println("both strings are not equal");

          return false;

        }

    }

    public static void main(String[] str){

      VerifyString verifyString = new VerifyString();

      Assert.assertTrue(verifyString.matchString("Akib", "Akib"));

      Assert.assertFalse(verifyString.matchString("Akib", "Sachin"));  

   }

}

Put above java class in to your java project and put all required jar file into lib folder.

Build.xml

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>

 <project name="Executable-Jar" default="" basedir="."> 

   <!-- ======= Initialize Properties ================== -->

    <property environment="env"/>

      <property name="src" location="src/com"/>      

      <property name="build" location="build"/>      

           

    <path id="test.classpath">

          <fileset dir="lib" includes="*.jar"/>

     </path>       

        

    <!-- clean -->

    <target name="clean">

        <delete dir="${test.dest}"/>

    </target>

   <!-- compile -->

   <target name="compile" depends="clean" >

      <delete includeemptydirs="true" quiet="true">

          <fileset dir="${test.dest}" includes="**/*"/>

      </delete>

      <echo message="making directory..."/>

      <mkdir dir="${build}"/>

     <!-- <echo message="classpath: ${test.classpath}"/> -->

      <echo message="compiling..."/>

      <javac

           debug="true"

           destdir="${build}"

           includes="*/*.java"

           srcdir="${src}"

           target="1.6"

           classpathref="test.classpath" 

        ></javac>

    </target>

    <!-- execute jar fle -->

    <target name="run" depends = "Create_Jar">       

      <java classname="com.test.VerifyString">

           <classpath>

             <pathelement location="Junit-Jar.jar"/>

           </classpath>

       </java>

      </target>  

     

    <!-- *********** create executable jar file ************ -->

   <target name="Create_Jar" depends="compile">

      <jar destfile="Junit-Jar.jar" filesetmanifest="mergewithoutmain">

          <manifest>

             <attribute name="Main-Class" value="com.test.VerifyString"/>

             <attribute name="Class-Path" value="."/>

           </manifest>

           <fileset dir="build"/>              

           <zipfileset excludes="META-INF/*.SF" src="lib/junit-4.8.2.jar"/>              

       </jar>

    </target>

</project>

Put above build.xml file into your project directory and run using command ant.

 ant run

After executing above command, a “Junit-Jar.jar “ jar file should be created under project directory and executed main method.

Created jar file also can be executed using command 

 Java -jar Junit-Jar.jar