boot-jar2bin

A Boot plugin for producing standalone console executables from uberjars, inspired by lein-bin.

Usage

Add adzerk/boot-jar2bin to your build.boot dependencies and require/refer in the task:

(set-env! :dependencies '[[adzerk/boot-jar2bin "X.Y.Z" :scope "test"]])
(require '[adzerk.boot-jar2bin :refer :all])

boot-jar2bin's bin and exe tasks can either take a jar file that you point it to, or be composed with the jar task in your Boot pipeline:

boot aot pom uber jar bin
boot bin --file target/existing-jar-0.1.0.jar

This will create a binary file, either for the file you specify, or if you don't specify a file, there will be one file for every jar in the fileset. Because files in the target directory cannot be made executable by Boot tasks, you'll have to do so manually:

chmod +x target/existing-jar-0.1.0

Alternatively, you can specify an output directory, and the files will be copied there and marked executable for you:

boot aot pom uber jar bin --output-dir bin

JVM Options

JVM options can be supplied to both the bin and exe tasks:

boot aot pom uber jar bin --jvm-opt -Dfoo=bar --jvm-opt -Dbaz=quux

Alternatively, you can use task-options! in your build.boot:

(def jvm-opts #{"-Dfoo=bar" "-Dbaz=quux"})

(task-options!
  bin {:jvm-opt jvm-opts}
  exe {:jvm-opt jvm-opts})

These options will be passed to the Java launcher each time the executable is run.

File Headers

The bin task creates binary files out of jars by simply prepending some lines, turning the file into an executable shell script that runs the jar file using java -jar. By default, the header it prepends is this (<JVM-OPTS> is where any JVM options you supply will go):

#!/bin/sh

exec java <JVM-OPTS> -jar $0 "$@"

If you'd like to use your own custom header (e.g. to include Java flags, set environment variables, etc.), you can put it in a file (say, head.sh), and use the --header option:

boot aot pom uber jar bin --header head.sh

NOTE: When using a custom header, you must hard-code in any JVM options; the --jvm-opt flag is provided as a convenience for when you're using the default header only.

Windows executables

The exe task can be used to create Windows executables from jar files. This requires that Launch4j be installed on your system. Launch4j requires additional configuration, which is typically supplied via a specialized XML file, but the exe task allows you to supply the values via task options. The easiest way to do this is to include them in your build.boot:

(task-options!
  exe {:name      'sandwich
       :main      'sandwich.core
       :version   "0.1.0"
       :desc      "Run this exe file if you like sandwiches."
       :copyright "2015 Earl of Sandwich"
       :jvm-opt   #{"-Dfoo=bar" "-Dbaz=baf"}})

Then, to create the executable, run the exe task, including an --output-dir argument to specify where you would like Launch4j to place the .exe file it outputs:

boot aot pom uber jar exe --output-dir bin

As with the bin task, you can also specify an existing jar file:

boot exe --file target/existing-jar-0.1.0.jar --output-dir bin

This will create an executable bin/existing-jar-0.1.0.exe.

License

Copyright © 2015 Adzerk

Distributed under the Eclipse Public License version 1.0.