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javanetbeansjarpackaging

The best way to distribute Java files

I hava a Java project that relies on several libraries, which are distributed as JAR files. When I build my project, I end up with myProject.jar with a lib folder that contains a JAR file for each of the libraries I used.

To distribute my project, I suppose I could just zip up the entire dist folder, but that's not very clean.

Rather than making a separate executable for each platform (.app for Mac, .exe for Windows, ...) that contains the libraries, is there a way to make a single cross-platform file (preferably a JAR) that I can distribute?

Thanks!

Solution

  • There are many tools that pack up a bunch of JARs into one. Enrique's suggestion is a higher-level tool for distributing applications; a lower-level more direct tool to do exactly what you ask is JarJar.