Deploying a Java application. How? - java

I am new to Java (and Eclipse) but I have used .NET (and Visual Studio) a fair amount. I also know about compiling C/C++ code and things like that. I know that at the end I get either an EXE or a nice binary file that can be run from the command line.
I have been making a Java utility that uses some external libraries. I need to compile this into an executable that I can run from the command line on a unix machine, but I cannot find any way to do this.
I can build and run/debug in Eclipse, but that is no use to me as this code will be run on a webserver. I just need all the dependancies compiled in to one file but after hours of searching on Google, the best thing I could find was the Fat-JAR plugin for Eclipse and after using that I just get the following error when I try to run the file:
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Network/jar
This is really confusing me and as it is such an essential thing to be able to do I am sure I must be missing something blindingly obvious, but as I said, after hours of searching I have gotten nowhere.
I really appreciate any help you can give me. Thanks.

If you build your java app using Maven (which can be done with every major IDE), then you can use the maven Shade Plugin to build a shaded jar file; this is a jar file with all of its dependencies included.
A shaded jar can be run from the command line like this:
java -jar myjar.jar command line options

You're doing something standard and you're using eclipse. This means, in your case, Maven is your friend. Download and install the M2Eclipse plug-in. Maven is best at managing dependencies. So, creating a jar with dependencies included will be very, very straight forward. There are thousands of examples on the web and in StackOverflow. If you have problems setting it up, comment on this and I can point you in the right direction.

Sounds like your class path on the server needs to be modified to pick up the jar file containing the Network class. How are you executing your program? What path(s) are you putting in the -cp option?
If you are not sure how to find out the contents inside a jar file, run jar tf , this will list the packaged classes. Validate that one of the jars in your CLASSPATH has that class it says missing.
Give us more details and we can help solve it.

I think I should first explain some basics. A Java class can be run as an application if it has a public static void main(String[] args) method. If it has this method, you can run it from command line as:
java my.package.MyClass <attributes>
Before launching your app, you need to make sure that all required .jar files (and the root of your own class folders, if you did not make a jar from your classes) are in the CLASSPATH environment variable.
These are the absolute basics. When you are building a more complex app, or an app for distribution, you'll probably use maven or ant or some other tool that makes your life easier.

Related

Can't find or load main class JarSplice

Hello fellow programmers! I am writing a game at the moment, that uses the following libraries: LWJGL, OpenGL, Slick. I know the problems with simply exporting a JAR file from eclipse when using libraries like that, and I do use the JarSplice program to make a fat JAR. This has worked fine for about a month now, however, just recently it stopped working. Whenever I export the JAR from eclipse, and make it a fat JAR using JarSplice, I get this error:
Could not find or load main class Game.jar
META-INF (Located in the fat JAR):
Manifest-Version: 1.0
Launcher-VM-Args:
Launcher-Main-Class: cubix.main.Cubix
Main-Class: org.ninjacave.jarsplice.JarSpliceLauncher
Please note that the main method of the program is located in the Cubix.class, which is located in cubix.main.Cubix'
I have never came across this error before, and it is driving me insane. If any additional information is required, please feel free to ask.
EDIT:
I might also add that if I export any other project this way (using the same libraries and using jarsplice to build a fat JAR) it works just fine. I am only experiencing this problem with this specific project in eclipse. However, when I run Cubix in eclipse debugger, it runs just fine.
Try couple of things :1 check the content of the file, use jar -tf see everything is present2. can you try running this file from command/terminal.3 if all above is good, compile Cubix.java from terminal and place this .class file in jar file manually and check.
I'm sorry for posting this. The problem wasn't that it couldn't find the main class but rather I had typed the command line wrong. I typed: 'java Cubix.jar -jar' rather than 'java -jar Cubix.jar'. Also, after fixing the command line, it gave me the stack trace for the error that was overlooked by eclipse, and that one of the textures that needed to be loaded was case sensitive.

How to get my program to run outside of eclipse

I have a project in eclipse. It does everything I want it to do when I click on the green circle play button in the IDE - opens the window, plays the stuff, everything. But, try as I might, I cannot figure out how to get it to do that outside of eclipse.
My project uses the processing.core library to do some of its stuff, but I am unable to get the project to function in the Processing IDE, because of some stupid stuff about one of my classes not being a valid substitute for the type parameter for Collections.sort(List<T>). If anyone knows how I can get it to export from the Processing IDE, that would be excellent.
I need to be able to email/upload to the internet/otherwise transmit some kind of file/folder/webpage that allows the recipient to, without much technical knowledge or work on their part, view a window or something that allows them to view and interact with the program in the same way I am able to interact with the window that Eclipse launches when I press the play button at the top.
I have tried several different ways of accomplishing this, but none of them have worked. I tried exporting a runnable .jar, but it wouldn't let me include the referenced libraries. I tried a regular .jar, but I don't know how to package that up with whatever is needed to be able to view it. I've even tried using the fat jar eclipse plugin for it, too, but I ran afoul of something about being unable to find the main PApplet class for the project.
If anybody knows how to get what I want to happen, or knows of a good tutorial on how to do what I want, I would greatly appreciate any sort of assistance or guidance or anything.
Google has been unhelpful in turning up solutions to this problem, because most of the results I have found were just other people asking the same or a similar question, and then either no answer, or something I had already tried, with no indication of exactly what sort of options or settings I needed to give it in order to accomplish the task.
I am using the processing.core.jar from version 2.0b7, but I don't think that would make a difference, although I plan to try it with different versions if I can't figure out anything else.
A copy of my project folder can be found at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1n4curhxbgi8fye/A5F6_l7xQu
All the data I have is stuff I've concatenated together from successive versions of the file at http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/catalogs/eqs7day-M1.txt
I've done a quick test on OSX and had to tweak your eclipse project a bit:
You are linking to .jar libraries using absolute path. I recommend using keeping libraries relative to the project
I ran into some memory issues and had to add a couple of compiler flags
Added a main method in Earthquaker.java to initialize as an application.
main looks like this:
public static void main(String[] args) {
PApplet.main(Earthquaker.class.getSimpleName());
}
In eclipse you can export a runnable jar via File > Export > Java > Runnable JAR file. Here are a couple of screenshots:
Personally I prefer using the "Copy required libraries into a sub-folder..." option in case I need to update some dependent .jar independent of the main application .jar.
For reference I've uploaded the modified eclipse project here(Java SDK will need to be changed). The exported runnable jar with a bash script is available here.
And here is the bash script itself which should run on Linux as well:
java -Xms128M -Xmx1024M -jar Processing-DataVisualization.jar
Pretty cool project btw.
Create a simple jar. Create a batch file and specify the class path. Save the batch file. Runnin the batch file will run the app
#ECHO OFF
set CLASSPATH=%CLASSPATH%;myjar1.jar;myjar2.jar;
java mypackage.MyClass

How to create Eclipse Project via Command Line or similiar solution?

first of all sorry for my bad english. I have a question and I cant find an answer anywhere.
My Programm exports some loose *.java files withouth any entrypoint. The written API allows an CMD to be executed. Problem is, the CMD Order to start eclipse with parameters. My questions is is it possible to start eclipse 3.3-3.6 with a command line parameter to create a project. Creating a Workspace through -data c:\xxxx\myworkspace is no problem but since eclipse sees no files outside a project, i need to make one so i can put my java files into it and startup an remote debug after it. The Plan is to startup an external export java file, which starts eclipse with the defined workspace and a fresh project (with the exported java files) for usage.
Using Maven it's possible to create an Eclipse project and all kinds of useful stuff, http://maven.apache.org/guides/mini/guide-ide-eclipse.html gives at least a starting point
There are some tools like Maven or Ant plugins that create Eclipse projects from some structural information (e.g. the Maven plugin reads the pom.xml).
If your code is unstructured it might be hard to create a fully functional Eclipse project. You might be able to create a Java project and define its source path (in fact it's a simple XML file called .project - you could easily write one yourself) but any other information like additional dependencies etc. would have to be added manually.
Besides that, creating a simple project from existing sources isn't that hard in Eclipse. Why don't you just do it manually?

Could not find the main class (on other computers)

I finished writing a java program and am ready to export it. I made a runnable jar from Eclipse. Running the jar works just fine on my computer, but throws the "Could not find main class" error on any other computer (including my other computer that I write Java on).
Whenever I search around for other people having the problem, it's always the same answer: Check the manifest file. I'm not seeing any problem with mine (Plus, can't imagine why it'd work on my computer but not someone else's)
Manifest:
Manifest-Version: 1.0
Main-Class: my.quick.monster.QuickMonster
And I've also tried:
Manifest-Version: 1.0
Class-Path: .
Main-Class: my.quick.monster.QuickMonster
Both work for me, but not other computers.
Thinking about the things that might be going wrong, here are a few other things to check:
make sure that there are no spurious characters (tabs, spaces) at the end of the lines.
check that the main class is actually in the JAR file with the right name.
on the machine that works, try changing your current directory and seeing if it still works.
check that you are using the same version of Java on each machine. Run java -version to check.
make sure that you are running it as an executable JAR; i.e. as java -jar foo.jar not as java -cp foo.jar.
(One theory is that the JAR is working on the one machine in spite of the manifest; e.g. that it is finding the class via the classpath in your CLASSPATH environment variable or something.)
To summarize for other folks, the OP's problem turned out to be that he had compiled his code with / for Java 7, and was trying to run the JAR on older Java installations. That wasn't working because of the classfile version numbers.
You can compile your code so that it will run on an older version of Java, but you need to use the -target option when compiling, and you ought to use the -bootclasspath option to compile against an rt.jar from the oldest Java version. A typical IDE will simplify this by allowing you to specify the target build platform, but it is worthwhile understanding the technical details, for cases where you are not using an IDE.
(I'm surprised that the java command didn't mention the classfile version number in the error message ...)
Make sure the MANIFEST.MF file contains a blank line at the end. If the Main-Class definition is on the very last line of the file, some class loaders ignore it.
Do not ever use 'eclipse-jar-worked-fine-on-my-computer'. I use maven shade jar plugin which excellently build a ready to run jar with all the dependencies, specified main class, etc.
EDIT:
What is the wrong with eclipse-builded-jar is that you won't been able to build it w/o elcipse. Maven is the common tool widely used to build packages of any kind. It's automated, and means that it can be used in CI environmet, etc. And the goal of a good developer is to write code so that it can be easily moved to CI.
However, if it's not a regular task, assuming to make just once/twice, theen, maybe, 'eclipse' solutio has also some benefits. But, I answered keeping in mind some cases of my past when people build packages in GUI just because they didn't manage to do it in maven.
So, I hope there is enough arguments for maven vs eclipse, so please stop downvote :D

Java application deploy

I have a Swing desktop application and have created a jar file which depends on library (which is kept in ./lib/) and a .txt file in the same folder. Now to execute the jar I have written a .bat file which checks if Java is installed or not. If installed then I run the jar file with command:
javaw -jar TagEdit.jar
Now there are two problems I am facing with this:
I would rather prefer a single executable, if possible.
As using bat file, the console is visible in back (looks kind of weird). Is it possible to turn it off?
Java is everywhere, and there are lots of applications that are built in Java and packaged in a setup, or given as exe. I Googled a lot but could not find a way to create a setup for the software or an exe. How are those software packaged?
Have tried jlaunch, but could not get that to work correctly.
Himz, Eclipse can automatically build a so-called "fat-jar" for you. It is a jar that contains all the dependencies you need.
If you are a happy Maven user, then you have two brilliant alternatives - the shade plugin, and the assembly plugin. They both can produce a "fat-jar" for you. :)
There are various answers to this.
javaws.exe will execute the jar without the console appearing behind
But I feel this isn't really the best way.
I think should investigate using Java Web Start, So you create a JNLP file and have it jar downloaded from the web, I think, you can also have a desktop icon.
If you don't want that
I think you can get/buy binary wrappers for the jar.
You could convert it to an executable. Try Googling java to exe.
Once that is done, you could package it up as an installer using NSIS.

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