Supporting Other Build Systems

If you want to use a build tool other than Maven, Gradle, or Ant, you likely need to develop your own plugin. Executable jars need to follow a specific format and certain entries need to be written in an uncompressed form (see the executable jar format section in the appendix for details).

The Spring Boot Maven and Gradle plugins both make use of spring-boot-loader-tools to actually generate jars. If you need to, you may use this library directly.

Repackaging Archives

To repackage an existing archive so that it becomes a self-contained executable archive, use org.springframework.boot.loader.tools.Repackager. The Repackager class takes a single constructor argument that refers to an existing jar or war archive. Use one of the two available repackage() methods to either replace the original file or write to a new destination. Various settings can also be configured on the repackager before it is run.

Nested Libraries

When repackaging an archive, you can include references to dependency files by using the org.springframework.boot.loader.tools.Libraries interface. We do not provide any concrete implementations of Libraries here as they are usually build-system-specific.

If your archive already includes libraries, you can use Libraries.NONE.

Finding a Main Class

If you do not use Repackager.setMainClass() to specify a main class, the repackager uses ASM to read class files and tries to find a suitable class with a public static void main(String[] args) method. An exception is thrown if more than one candidate is found.

Example Repackage Implementation

The following example shows a typical repackage implementation:

Java
Kotlin

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.List;

import org.springframework.boot.loader.tools.Library;
import org.springframework.boot.loader.tools.LibraryCallback;
import org.springframework.boot.loader.tools.LibraryScope;
import org.springframework.boot.loader.tools.Repackager;

public class MyBuildTool {

	public void build() throws IOException {
		File sourceJarFile = ...
		Repackager repackager = new Repackager(sourceJarFile);
		repackager.setBackupSource(false);
		repackager.repackage(this::getLibraries);
	}

	private void getLibraries(LibraryCallback callback) throws IOException {
		// Build system specific implementation, callback for each dependency
		for (File nestedJar : getCompileScopeJars()) {
			callback.library(new Library(nestedJar, LibraryScope.COMPILE));
		}
		// ...
	}

	private List<File> getCompileScopeJars() {
		return ...
	}

}

import org.springframework.boot.loader.tools.Library
import org.springframework.boot.loader.tools.LibraryCallback
import org.springframework.boot.loader.tools.LibraryScope
import org.springframework.boot.loader.tools.Repackager
import java.io.File
import java.io.IOException

class MyBuildTool {

	@Throws(IOException::class)
	fun build() {
		val sourceJarFile: File? =  ...
		val repackager = Repackager(sourceJarFile)
		repackager.setBackupSource(false)
		repackager.repackage { callback: LibraryCallback -> getLibraries(callback) }
	}

	@Throws(IOException::class)
	private fun getLibraries(callback: LibraryCallback) {
		// Build system specific implementation, callback for each dependency
		for (nestedJar in getCompileScopeJars()!!) {
			callback.library(Library(nestedJar, LibraryScope.COMPILE))
		}
		// ...
	}

	private fun getCompileScopeJars(): List<File?>? {
		return  ...
	}

}