How do you create a MANIFEST.MF that's available when you're testing and running from a jar in production?

Question

I\'ve spent far too much time trying to figure this out. This should be the simplest thing and everyone who distributes Java applications in jars must have to deal with it.

Answer 1

Here's what I've found that works:

packageVersion.java:

package com.company.division.project.packageversion;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.util.jar.Attributes;
import java.util.jar.Manifest;

public class packageVersion
{
    void printVersion()
    {
        try
        {         
            InputStream stream = getClass().getResourceAsStream("/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF");

            if (stream == null)
            {
                System.out.println("Couldn't find manifest.");
                System.exit(0);
            }

            Manifest manifest = new Manifest(stream);

            Attributes attributes = manifest.getMainAttributes();

            String impTitle = attributes.getValue("Implementation-Title");
            String impVersion = attributes.getValue("Implementation-Version");
            String impBuildDate = attributes.getValue("Built-Date");
            String impBuiltBy = attributes.getValue("Built-By");

            if (impTitle != null)
            {
                System.out.println("Implementation-Title:   " + impTitle);
            }            
            if (impVersion != null)
            {
                System.out.println("Implementation-Version: " + impVersion);
            }
            if (impBuildDate != null)
            {
                System.out.println("Built-Date: " + impBuildDate);
            }
            if (impBuiltBy != null)
            {
                System.out.println("Built-By:   " + impBuiltBy);
            }

            System.exit(0);
        }
        catch (IOException e)
        {            
            System.out.println("Couldn't read manifest.");
        }        
    }

    /**
     * @param args
     */
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        packageVersion version = new packageVersion();
        version.printVersion();        
    }

}

Here's the matching build.xml: