Distributing Apps

In the development environment chapter, it was noted that you can create and install a runnable jar of your Clojure app like so:

cd path/to/my-app
lein uberjar
cp target/my-app-0.1.0-standalone.jar ~/bin

Running the app in the typical way from the command line ¹ takes a lot of typing though:

java -jar ~/bin/my-app-0.1.0-standalone.jar arg1 arg1 whatever

To make it easier for you and your friends to run your app, create a little script named after it:

cd ~/bin
touch my-app.sh
chmod +x my-app.sh

and into it put the following:

#!/bin/bash

java -jar ~/bin/my-app-0.1.0-standalone.jar "$@"

When you send your jar to a friend, send this script along as well. Both the jar and the script should go into the ~/bin directory. Now, running your app is as easy as:

my-app.sh arg1 arg2 whatever