Deploying Tic-Tac-Toe Java GUI app

In this post, we deploy our tic-tac-toe Java GUI app so that it can be invoked either by double-clicking it or through the command line. Note: These steps below were performed on a Windows system.

1. First, assemble all the Java source files in a folder of your choice.
2. Open your Command Prompt.
3. Navigate to your chosen folder in the Command Prompt using the cd command. e.g. cd Java\progs\TicTacToeGUIDemo
4. Compile all the Java source files with javac compiler. e.g. javac -d . *.java.
   * means all Java files in the current folder.
5. After successful compilation, the root package of your app will appear as a folder. In our case it’s ‘com’.
6. Now, we need to create a manifest file to help us create a java archive file or JAR file.
   This file can be used to launch the app just by double-clicking on it.
   It can also be invoked using the java command from Command Prompt. e.g. java -jar TicTacToe.jar
7. Open Notepad and create a blank new file called manifest.mf
8. In this file, type:Main-Class: com.tictactoe.gameplay.AWTTicTacToe. This is the main class name, qualified by the full package name.
9. After step 8, be sure to add a blank new line in the text file manifest.mf
10. Save the manifest file and close it.
11. Go back to your Command Prompt.
    Type the following: jar cvmf manifest.mf  –jar file name–  –root package folder name–
    e.g. jar cvmf manifest.mf TicTacToe.jar com
12. You will get some verbose output from the jar command. To open your jar file, you can follow either of the steps in step 6 above.

View the video below to see it all in action.