jar and MANIFEST.MF

[mark I thomas]

I have a folder that contains all the classes and META-INF. Here is the subfolders

com (includes its subfolders that contain .class files)
META-INF/MANIFEST.MF

I used ant

<jar jarfile="myapp.jar"
basedir="."/>

to create a "myapp.jar" file. The jar was successfully generated. However, when I do

"jar -xvf myapp.jar" to unpack it, I saw the META-INF/ folder and its MANIFEST.MF fiel. The MANIFEST.MF is different from the original MANIFEST.MF I used for packing.

Do you know why and how I can ensure the MANIFESTY.MF is not changed ?

[Ulf Dittmer]

The proper way to add a manifest is not to have a file in a META-INF directory, but to specify the file in a manifest attribute. The file can be anywhere and be named anything; Ant will package it properly.

Even better, you can keep the meta information in the build file (if you want):

<jar jarfile="myapp.jar" basedir=".">
	<manifest>
		<attribute name="Main-Class" value="com.mypackage.Main"/>
	</manifest>
</jar>