Installing Spring Boot Applications

In addition to running Spring Boot applications by using java -jar, it is also possible to make fully executable applications for Unix systems. A fully executable jar can be executed like any other executable binary or it can be registered with init.d or systemd. This helps when installing and managing Spring Boot applications in common production environments.

Fully executable jars work by embedding an extra script at the front of the file. Currently, some tools do not accept this format, so you may not always be able to use this technique. For example, jar -xf may silently fail to extract a jar or war that has been made fully executable. It is recommended that you make your jar or war fully executable only if you intend to execute it directly, rather than running it with java -jar or deploying it to a servlet container.

A zip64-format jar file cannot be made fully executable. Attempting to do so will result in a jar file that is reported as corrupt when executed directly or with java -jar. A standard-format jar file that contains one or more zip64-format nested jars can be fully executable.

To create a ‘fully executable’ jar with Maven, use the following plugin configuration:

<plugin>
	<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
	<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
	<configuration>
		<executable>true</executable>
	</configuration>
</plugin>

The following example shows the equivalent Gradle configuration:

tasks.named('bootJar') {
	launchScript()
}

You can then run your application by typing ./my-application.jar (where my-application is the name of your artifact). The directory containing the jar is used as your application’s working directory.