Spring Boot Executable Jar with Classpath

On Linux:

java -cp MyApp.jar:/home/sleeper/thirdparty/lib -Dloader.main=myMainApplicationClass org.springframework.boot.loader.PropertiesLauncher 

On Windows:

java -cp MyApp.jar;/home/sleeper/thirdparty/lib -Dloader.main=myMainApplicationClass org.springframework.boot.loader.PropertiesLauncher 

This will avoid messing with the manifest or the Spring Boot Maven plugin configuration as in the other answers. It will launch your app with the PropertiesLauncher, which allows you to specify the main class in loader.main. As mentioned earlier, for some reason if you use PropertiesLauncher with loader.path, it will not add resource files to the classpath. This works around the issue by using -cp instead of -jar.

EDIT As mentioned by Pianosaurus in the comment, use ":" instead of ";" as separator in the classpath on Linux

You mentioned that you needed to load *.ini files from an external folder. I had to do something similar, load CSV files from an external folder.

My file structure looked like this

./myapp.jar ./config/file.csv 

I was using the ResouceLoader to load the files as:

Resource res = resourceLoader.getResource("classpath:file.csv"); File csvFile = res.getFile(); 

Start script:

java -Dloader.path="config" -jar your-app.jar 

The resource was not loading from the "config" folder as expected. After some research I found out that I had to change my Maven plugin configuration to use ZIP layout.

<plugin> <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId> <configuration> <layout>ZIP</layout> </configuration> </plugin> 

This will direct Spring Boot to use PropertiesLauncher, which allows loading external resources from "loader.path".

See this excellent article for more detail.

 java -cp C:\jar-path\your-jar-1.2.0.jar -Dloader.main=package-and-main class -Dloader.path=external dependency jar path org.springframework.boot.loader.PropertiesLauncher -Dspring.profiles.active=profile etc -default,test --spring.config.location=external properties file name 

If want to define external memory use

 java -ms8g -mx8g -cp 

java -cp

• Differences between "java -cp" and "java -jar"?

-Dloader.main

Spring Boot’s org.springframework.boot.loader.PropertiesLauncher comes with a JVM argument to let you override the logical main-class called loader.main:

-Dloader.path

Tell the PropertiesLauncher that it should pick up any libraries found in the “lib”

org.springframework.boot.loader.PropertiesLauncher

Spring Boot’s org.springframework.boot.loader.PropertiesLauncher comes with a JVM argument to let you override the logical main-class called loader.main:

 java -cp bootApp.jar -Dloader.main=org.khan.DemoApplication org.springframework.boot.loader.PropertiesLauncher 

-Dspring.profiles.active

If you are using Spring profile then you need to set profile first

 set SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE=default,test 

or window run type envi and add

 spring_profiles_active default,test 

--spring.config.location

Directory is specified then that is where the application.properties is searched for

• https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/html/boot-features-external-config.html

Just to add a simple solution without PropertiesLauncher or too much arguments.

1 - Build your standard executable springboot jar (my-spring-boot-app.jar)

2 - then run it without using the -jar option and using the JarLauncher class as the main class

java -cp "/path/to/jars/*:/path/to/app/my-spring-boot-app.jar" org.springframework.boot.loader.JarLauncher 

(relative pathes are also perfectly valid)

that's all

One solution that worked for me was to insert the jar with the external classes into the MANIFEST.MF's Class-Path. That's because the -jar switch ignores the -classpath option and the CLASSPATH environment variable.
Procedure:

1. install the maven-jar-plugin into the POM;
2. add the lines:

 <configuration> <archive> <manifestEntries> <Class-Path>/my/external/jar/absolute/path.jar</Class-Path> </manifestEntries> </archive> </configuration> 

Build and run with java -jar myapp.jar. Its manifest will contain the line:

Class-Path: /my/external/jar/absolute/path.jar 

This way the external jar will be searched at runtime and not at compile-time (it won't be copied in BOOT_INF/lib).

Sources:

post 1

post 2

The standard way to add dependencies in Spring Boot project is placing those Jar files into BOOT-INF/lib. This will result in copy that dependencies in the jar or war file generated and with the classpath.idx updated as well.

You can see the official documentation here

The accuracy literature says:

Application classes should be placed in a nested BOOT-INF/classes directory. Dependencies should be placed in a nested BOOT-INF/lib directory

I already do that with external Jar files and everything gone Ok.