Adding META-INF/MANIFEST.MF to JAR Files

Java Tools Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟Adding META-INF/MANIFEST.MF to JAR Files

This section provides a tutorial example on how to create and add manifest files manually to JAR files.

There are two ways to add "manifest" to a JAR file.

1. Adding "manifest" through "jar" command line. Store all your manifest attributes in a file. And specify this file in the "jar" command line with the "--manifest=FILE" option. The old formats of the "--manifest" option are "-m" and "m".

For example, I created my own manifest file called manifest.txt with one attribute in it:

Main-Class: Hello

Remember to press the <Enter> key at the end of the attribute list. This will insert a blank line to terminate the attribute list.

Here is how I added my manifest to a JAR file with the "--manifest" option:

herong> jar --create --verbose --file hello.jar \
  --manifest=manifest.txt Hello.class

added manifest
adding: Hello.class(in = 416) (out= 285)(deflated 31%)

To verify if the manifest file was added correctly or not, I extracted all files out of the JAR file and checked the META-INF/MANIFEST.MF file:

herong> jar --extract --verbose --file hello.jar
  created: META-INF/
 inflated: META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
 inflated: Hello.class

herong> type META-INF\MANIFEST.MF
Manifest-Version: 1.0
Main-Class: Hello
Created-By: 10.0.1 (Oracle Corporation)

As you can see, the "jar --create" command copied the attribute from my manifest file into the auto-generated MANIFEST.MF file.

2. Adding "manifest" through META-INF/MANIFEST.MF file. Create META-INF/MANIFEST.MF as a text file. Enter all your manifest attributes in this file. And include META-INF/MANIFEST.MF as an input file to "jar --create" command.

For example, I created my own META-INF/MANIFEST.MF with a text editor as:

Manifest-Version: 3.3
Created-By: Herong Yang
Main-Class: Hello

Here is how I added my manifest to a JAR file by providing the META-INF as an input entry:

herong> jar --create --verbose --file tutu.jar --no-manifest \
   Hello.class META-INF

adding: Hello.class(in = 416) (out= 285)(deflated 31%)
adding: META-INF/(in = 0) (out= 0)(stored 0%)
adding: META-INF/MANIFEST.MF(in = 69) (out= 69)(deflated 0%)

herong> jar --list --verbose --file tutu.jar
   416 ... 2018 Hello.class
     0 ... 2018 META-INF/
    69 ... 2018 META-INF/MANIFEST.MF

Note that:

The "--no-manifest" option stops "jar --create" command to auto-generate the META-INF/MANIFEST.MF file.
The old formats of the "--no-manifest" option are "-M" and "M".