Grails Goodness: Creating A Runnable Distribution
Grails 3.1 allows us to build a runnable WAR file for our application with the package command. We can run this WAR file with Java using the -jar option. In Grails 3.0 the package command also created a JAR file that could be executed as standalone application. Let's see how we can still create the JAR with Grails 3.1.
First we use the package command to create the WAR file. The file is generated in the directory build/libs. The WAR file can be run with the command java -jar sample-0.1.war if the file name of our WAR file is sample-0.1.war. It is important to run this command in the same directory as where the WAR file is, otherwise we get an ServletException when we open the application in our web browser (javax.servlet.ServletException: Could not resolve view with name '/index' in servlet with name 'grailsDispatcherServlet').
$ grails package
:compileJava UP-TO-DATE
:compileGroovy
:findMainClass
:assetCompile
...
Finished Precompiling Assets
:buildProperties
:processResources
:classes
:compileWebappGroovyPages UP-TO-DATE
:compileGroovyPages
:war
:bootRepackage
:assemble
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
| Built application to build/libs using environment: production
$ cd build/libs
$ java -jar sample-0.1.war
Grails application running at http://localhost:8080 in environment: production
Instead of using the Grails package command we can use the assemble task if we use Gradle: $ ./gradlew assemble
To create a runnable JAR file we only have to remove the war plugin from our Gradle build file. The package command now creates the JAR file in the directory build/libs.
$ grails package
:compileJava UP-TO-DATE
:compileGroovy
:findMainClass
:assetCompile
...
Finished Precompiling Assets
:buildProperties
:processResources
:classes
:compileWebappGroovyPages UP-TO-DATE
:compileGroovyPages
:jar
:bootRepackage
:assemble
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
| Built application to build/libs using environment: production
$ java -jar build/libs/sample-0.1.jar
Grails application running at http://localhost:8080 in environment: production
Written with Grails 3.1.
