Gradle- no main manifest attribute

Question

I\'m kind of going crazy with this error I get when running a JAR file built off Gradle. The error reads \"no main manifest attribute, in RxJavaDemo.jar\" I tried manipulat

Answer 1

To make the jar file executable (so that the java -jar command works), specify the Main-Class attribute in MANIFEST.MF.

In Gradle, you can do it by configuring the jar task.

• for Groovy DSL see these answers ([1], [2])
• for Kotlin DSL you can use the following code snippet:

tasks.withType {
    manifest {
        attributes["Main-Class"] = "com.caco3.Main"
    }
}

Why mainClassName does not work as expected?

Or why mainClassName does not specify the attribute in the manifest?

The mainClassName property comes from the application plugin. The plugin:

makes it easy to start the application locally during development, and to package the application as a TAR and/or ZIP including operating system specific start scripts.

So the application plugin does not aim at producing executable jars

When a mainClassName property set, then:

1. $ ./gradlew run will launch the main method in the class specified in the attribute
2. the zip/tar archive built using distZip/distTar tasks will contain a script, which will launch the main method of the specified previously class.

Here is the line of shell script setting the main class:

$ grep Main2 gradletest
eval set -- $DEFAULT_JVM_OPTS $JAVA_OPTS $GRADLETEST_OPTS -classpath "\"$CLASSPATH\"" com.caco3.gradletest.Main2 "$APP_ARGS"