Difference between jar file created with the jar utility and the zip utility

[JunkerMartin]

I have also posted this in the "Java Software"-column. I'm not sure where exactly to place it, but Java-Software was definitely the wrong place! Unfortunately I couldn't move it, so I copied the whole stuff here.


For training purposes I created a jar file with the zip-utility. I edited the MANIFEST.MF-file and added it as well to the archive. But this gave me a "Invalid or corrupt jarfile" as I was told when I tried to start it with "java -jar ...". The I did the same with the jar-utility. This worked fine. The exploded versions of the jars don't show any difference.
This is the Ant I used to create both of this archives:

	<!-- pack to repository.jar by zip -->
	<target name="jarRepository" depends="compileRepository">
	 	<zip zipfile="${generate.dir}/repository.jar" >
	 		 <fileset dir="${build.classes.dir}" includes="repository/**"/>
	 		 <fileset dir="${repository}"        includes="META-INF/**"/>
	   </zip>
	  </target>
	
	<!-- pack to repository.jar by jar -->
	<target name="jar2Repository" depends="compileRepository">
	 	<jar jarfile="${generate.dir}/repository2.jar" >
	 		 <fileset dir="${build.classes.dir}" includes="repository/**"/>
	   </jar>
	</target>

The content of the zipped jarfile is:
0 Fri Feb 01 12:18:40 CET 2013 META-INF/
102 Fri Feb 01 12:03:30 CET 2013 META-INF/MANIFEST-MF
0 Fri Feb 01 12:16:46 CET 2013 repository/
1263 Thu Jan 31 11:07:58 CET 2013 repository/Activator.java
0 Thu Jan 31 09:38:50 CET 2013 repository/impl/
3356 Thu Jan 31 11:52:46 CET 2013 repository/impl/XMLRepositoryService.java
467 Fri Feb 01 12:03:08 CET 2013 repository/MANIFEST.TXT
0 Thu Jan 31 12:00:02 CET 2013 repository/META-INF/
102 Fri Feb 01 12:03:30 CET 2013 repository/META-INF/MANIFEST-MF
1408 Thu Jan 31 11:46:18 CET 2013 repository/Node.java
3 Fri Feb 01 08:27:22 CET 2013 repository/packageinfo
131 Thu Jan 31 09:22:48 CET 2013 repository/RepositoryService.java

The content of the "jared" jarfile is:
0 Fri Feb 01 12:04:02 CET 2013 META-INF/
106 Fri Feb 01 12:04:00 CET 2013 META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
0 Fri Feb 01 12:04:02 CET 2013 repository/
0 Fri Feb 01 12:04:02 CET 2013 repository/impl/
1610 Fri Feb 01 12:04:02 CET 2013 repository/Activator.class
2713 Fri Feb 01 12:04:02 CET 2013 repository/Node.class
251 Fri Feb 01 12:04:02 CET 2013 repository/RepositoryService.class
4911 Fri Feb 01 12:04:02 CET 2013 repository/impl/XMLRepositoryService.class

The content of the MAINIFEST.MF is in both cases:

Manifest-Version: 1.0
Ant-Version: Apache Ant 1.8.3
Created-By: 1.6.0_38-b05 (Sun Microsystems Inc.)

Any idea what might be wrong?

brgds,
Ulrich

[PhHein]

You've zipped the *.java files, not the compiled *.class files.

[JosAH]

Those files are completely different ... the zipped version contains .java source files while the other one contains compiled .class files; the first version contains more entries; they can't be compared.

kind regards,

Jos

[KevinWorkman]

I deleted your other post.

[JunkerMartin]

Sorry, I tried this much with different parameters. At last I displayed one created with a false the wrong jarfile here. This is the correct one.

0 Fri Feb 01 16:23:38 CET 2013 repository/
0 Fri Feb 01 16:23:38 CET 2013 repository/impl/
1610 Fri Feb 01 16:23:38 CET 2013 repository/Activator.class
2713 Fri Feb 01 16:23:38 CET 2013 repository/Node.class
251 Fri Feb 01 16:23:38 CET 2013 repository/RepositoryService.class
4911 Fri Feb 01 16:23:38 CET 2013 repository/impl/XMLRepositoryService.class
0 Thu Jan 31 12:00:02 CET 2013 META-INF/
102 Fri Feb 01 12:03:30 CET 2013 META-INF/MANIFEST-MF

Sorry for the confusion. As you can see in the Ant-xml; the both of the tasks use the same directory to build the archive.
When executing the archive with the sources it ends with message "Failed to Main-Class manifest attribute from .."

brgds,
Ulrich

Those files are completely different ... the zipped version contains .java source files while the other one contains compiled .class files; the first version contains more entries; they can't be compared.

kind regards,

Jos

[Tolls]

From the docs.
"
Ant has been offering the encoding attribute of the zip and unzip task as a way to explicitly specify the encoding to use (or expect) since Ant 1.4. It defaults to the platform's default encoding for zip and UTF-8 for jar and other jar-like tasks (war, ear, ...) as well as the unzip family of tasks.
"
So, could be an encoding issue. If that's a Win platform it'll be encoded in that Win encoding whose name I've forgotten.

[JunkerMartin]

It's solved now. The problem was a typing error in the filename of the manifest-file. I had spelled it "MANIFEST-MF" but must read "MANIFEST.MF".
Thanks.