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Launching Executable Jars
The Launcher
class is a special bootstrap class that is used as an executable jar’s main entry point.
It is the actual Main-Class
in your jar file, and it is used to setup an appropriate ClassLoader
and ultimately call your main()
method.
There are three launcher subclasses (JarLauncher
, WarLauncher
, and PropertiesLauncher
).
Their purpose is to load resources (.class
files and so on) from nested jar files or war files in directories (as opposed to those explicitly on the classpath).
In the case of JarLauncher
and WarLauncher
, the nested paths are fixed.
JarLauncher
looks in BOOT-INF/lib/
, and WarLauncher
looks in WEB-INF/lib/
and WEB-INF/lib-provided/
.
You can add extra jars in those locations if you want more.
The PropertiesLauncher
looks in BOOT-INF/lib/
in your application archive by default.
You can add additional locations by setting an environment variable called LOADER_PATH
or loader.path
in loader.properties
(which is a comma-separated list of directories, archives, or directories within archives).
Launcher Manifest
You need to specify an appropriate Launcher
as the Main-Class
attribute of META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
.
The actual class that you want to launch (that is, the class that contains a main
method) should be specified in the Start-Class
attribute.
The following example shows a typical MANIFEST.MF
for an executable jar file:
Main-Class: org.springframework.boot.loader.launch.JarLauncher
Start-Class: com.mycompany.project.MyApplication
For a war file, it would be as follows:
Main-Class: org.springframework.boot.loader.launch.WarLauncher
Start-Class: com.mycompany.project.MyApplication
You need not specify Class-Path entries in your manifest file.
The classpath is deduced from the nested jars.
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