How to Create a JAR File and Run it

Creating a JAR File

The basic format of the command for creating a JAR file is:

jar cf new-jar-file files-to-be-converted-to-jar

The options and arguments used in this command are:

The c -  to create JAR file.
The f - output to go to a file rather than to stdout.
new-jar-file - name of the resulting JAR file. By convention, JAR filenames are given a .jar extension, though this is not required.
files-to-be-converted-to-jar argument - list of files to be converted to jar .Use space to seperate each file.
If any of the input-files are directories, the contents of those directories are added to the JAR archive recursively.


Above command will generate a jar in current directory.
This command will also generate a default manifest file for the JAR archive.


You will need to use the java command to run a .jar file:

java -jar MyApplication.jar

If you don't have java installed, you can fix that by installing the default-jre package from oracle website.
You can see if you already have java installed by running in a terminal or in command line:

java --version