Java Tools Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Notes

∟'jar' - The JAR File Tool

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

This section provides a tutorial example on how to add manifest files 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 "m" option: 

jar c[v0]mf manifest jarfile inputfiles

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. This will insert a new line character (\n) to terminate the attribute.

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

C:\herong>jar cvmf manifest.txt hello.jar Hello.class
added manifest
adding: Hello.class(in = 416) (out= 285)(deflated 31%)

C:\herong>jar xvf hello.jar
  created: META-INF/
extracted: META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
extracted: Hello.class

C:\herong>type META-INF\MANIFEST.MF
Manifest-Version: 1.0
Created-By: 1.8.0 (Oracle Corporation)
Main-Class: Hello

As you can see that "jar" command copied the attribute from my manifest file to the end of 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 file.

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 with the "M" option: 

C:\herong>jar cvMf tutu.jar 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 = 19) (out= 21)(deflated -10%)

C:\herong>jar tf tutu.jar
Hello.class
META-INF/
META-INF/MANIFEST.MF

Note that:

Last update: 2015.

Table of Contents

 About This Book

 Java Tools Terminology

 Installing Java 8 on Windows

 'javac' - The Java Program Compiler

 'java' - The Java Program Launcher

 'jdb' - The Java Debugger

 'jconsole' - Java Monitoring and Management Console

 'jstat' - JVM Statistics Monitoring Tool

 JVM Troubleshooting Tools

 jvisualvm (Java VisualVM) - JVM Visual Tool

►'jar' - The JAR File Tool

 JAR - Java Archive File Format

 'jar' - JAR File Tool Command and Options

 Creating the First JAR File - hello.jar

 Managing JAR Files with WinZIP

 META-INF/MANIFEST.MF - JAR Manifest File

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

 Using JAR Files in Java Class Paths

 Creating Executable JAR Files

 'javap' - The Java Class File Disassembler

 'keytool' - Public Key Certificate Tool

 'native2ascii' - Native-to-ASCII Encoding Converter

 Outdated Tutorials

 References

 PDF Printing Version