Native Image

Native Image is a technology to compile Java code ahead-of-time to a binary—a native executable. A native executable includes only the code required at run time, that is the application classes, standard-library classes, the language runtime, and statically-linked native code from the JDK.

An executable file produced by Native Image has several important advantages, in that it

Uses a fraction of the resources required by the Java Virtual Machine, so is cheaper to run
Starts in milliseconds
Delivers peak performance immediately, with no warmup
Can be packaged into a lightweight container image for fast and efficient deployment
Presents a reduced attack surface

A native executable is created by the Native Image builder or native-image that processes your application classes and other metadata to create a binary for a specific operating system and architecture. First, the native-image tool performs static analysis of your code to determine the classes and methods that are reachable when your application runs. Second, it compiles classes, methods, and resources into a binary. This entire process is called build time to clearly distinguish it from the compilation of Java source code to bytecode.

The native-image tool can be used to build a native executable, which is the default, or a native shared library. This quick start guide focuses on building a native executable; to learn more about native shared libraries, go here.

To get used to Native Image terminology and get better understanding of the technology, we recommend you to read the Basics of Native Image.

Table of Contents #

Build a Native Executable Using Maven or Gradle
Build a Native Executable Using the native-image Tool
Build Configuration
Configuring Native Image with Third-Party Libraries
Further Reading

Prerequisites #

The native-image tool, available in the bin directory of your GraalVM installation, depends on the local toolchain (header files for the C library, glibc-devel, zlib, gcc, and/or libstdc++-static). These dependencies can be installed (if not yet installed) using a package manager on your machine. Choose your operating system to find instructions to meet the prerequisites.

Linux

On Oracle Linux use the yum package manager:

sudo yum install gcc glibc-devel zlib-devel

Some Linux distributions may additionally require libstdc++-static. You can install libstdc++-static if the optional repositories are enabled (ol7_optional_latest on Oracle Linux 7, ol8_codeready_builder on Oracle Linux 8, and ol9_codeready_builder on Oracle Linux 9).

On Ubuntu Linux use the apt-get package manager:

sudo apt-get install build-essential zlib1g-dev

On other Linux distributions use the dnf package manager:

sudo dnf install gcc glibc-devel zlib-devel libstdc++-static

MacOS

On macOS use xcode:

xcode-select --install

Windows

To use Native Image on Windows, install Visual Studio 2022 version 17.6.0 or later, and Microsoft Visual C++ (MSVC). There are two installation options:

Install the Visual Studio Build Tools with the Windows 11 SDK (or later version)
Install Visual Studio with the Windows 11 SDK (or later version)

Native Image runs in both a PowerShell or Command Prompt and will automatically set up build environments on Windows, given that it can find a suitable Visual Studio installation.

For more information, see Using GraalVM and Native Image on Windows.

Build a Native Executable Using Maven or Gradle #

We provide Maven and Gradle plugins for Native Image to automate building, testing, and configuring native executables.

Maven #

The Maven plugin for Native Image adds support for compiling a Java application into a native executable using Apache Maven.

Create a new Maven Java project named “helloworld” in your favorite IDE or from your terminal with the following structure:

 ├── pom.xml
 └── src
     ├── main
     │   └── java
     │       └── com
     │           └── example
     │               └── App.java

For example, you can run this command to create a new Maven project using the quickstart archetype:

 mvn archetype:generate -DgroupId=com.example -DartifactId=helloworld -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-quickstart -DinteractiveMode=false

Add the regular Maven plugins for compiling and assembling the project into an executable JAR file to your pom.xml file:

 <build>
     <plugins>
         <plugin>
             <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
             <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
             <version>3.12.1</version>
             <configuration>
                 <fork>true</fork>
             </configuration>
         </plugin>
         <plugin>
             <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
             <artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
             <version>3.3.0</version>
             <configuration>
                 <archive>
                     <manifest>
                         <mainClass>com.example.App</mainClass>
                         <addClasspath>true</addClasspath>
                     </manifest>
                 </archive>
             </configuration>
         </plugin>
     </plugins>
 </build>

Enable the Maven plugin for Native Image by adding the following profile to pom.xml:

 <profiles>
   <profile>
     <id>native</id>
     <build>
       <plugins>
         <plugin>
           <groupId>org.graalvm.buildtools</groupId>
           <artifactId>native-maven-plugin</artifactId>
           <version>${native.maven.plugin.version}</version>
           <extensions>true</extensions>
           <executions>
             <execution>
             <id>build-native</id>
               <goals>
                 <goal>compile-no-fork</goal>
               </goals>
               <phase>package</phase>
             </execution>
             <execution>
             <id>test-native</id>
               <goals>
                 <goal>test</goal>
               </goals>
               <phase>test</phase>
             </execution>
           </executions>
         </plugin>
       </plugins>
     </build>
   </profile>
 </profiles>

Set the version property to the latest plugin version (for example, by specifying the version via <native.maven.plugin.version> in the <properties> element).

Compile the project and build a native executable at one step:
```
 mvn -Pnative package
```
The native executable, named helloworld, is created in the target/ directory of the project.
Run the executable:
```
 ./target/helloworld 
```
That is it, you successfully created the native executable for your Java application using Maven.

The Maven plugin for Native Image building offers many other features that may be required for an application with more complexity, such as resources autodetection, generating the required configuration, running JUnit Platform tests on a native executable, and so on, described in the plugin reference documentation.

Gradle #

The Gradle plugin for Native Image adds support for compiling a Java application into a native executable using the Gradle build tool.

Create a new Gradle Java project named “helloworld” in your favorite IDE or from your terminal with the following structure:

 ├── app
 │   ├── build.gradle
 │   └── src
 │       ├── main
 │       │   ├── java
 │       │   │   └── org
 │       │   │       └── example
 │       │   │           └── App.java
 │       │   └── resources

For example, initialize a new Gradle project with the java plugin:

Create a new directory and enter it:
```
  mkdir helloworld && cd helloworld
```
Generate a project:
```
  gradle init --project-name helloworld --type java-application --test-framework junit-jupiter --dsl groovy
```
Follow the prompts. This command sets up a new Java application with the necessary directory structure and build files.

Enable the Gradle plugin for Native Image by adding the following to plugins section of your project’s build.gradle file:
```
 plugins {
 // ...
 id 'org.graalvm.buildtools.native' version 'x.x.x'
 }
```
Specify the latest plugin version for the 'x.x.x' version value.
Build a native executable by running ./gradlew nativeCompile:
```
 ./gradlew nativeCompile
```
The native executable, named app, is created in the app/build/native/nativeCompile/ directory of the project.
Run the native executable:
```
 ./app/build/native/nativeCompile/app 
```
That is it, you successfully created the native executable for your Java application using Gradle.

The Gradle plugin for Native Image building has many other features that may be required for an application with more complexity, such as resources autodetection, generating the required configuration, running JUnit Platform tests on a native executable, and so on, described in the plugin reference documentation.

Build a Native Executable Using the `native-image` Tool #

The native-image tool takes Java bytecode as its input. You can build a native executable from a class file, from a JAR file, or from a module (with Java 9 and higher).

From a Class #

To build a native executable from a Java class file in the current working directory, use the following command:

native-image [options] class [imagename] [options]

For example, build a native executable for a HelloWorld application.

Save this code into file named HelloWorld.java:

 public class HelloWorld {
     public static void main(String[] args) {
         System.out.println("Hello, Native World!");
     }
 }

Compile it and build a native executable from the Java class:
```
 javac HelloWorld.java
 native-image HelloWorld
```
It will create a native executable, helloworld, in the current working directory.

Run the application:

 ./helloworld

You can time it to see the resources used:

 time -f 'Elapsed Time: %e s Max RSS: %M KB' ./helloworld
 # Hello, Native World!
 # Elapsed Time: 0.00 s Max RSS: 7620 KB

From a JAR file #

To build a native executable from a JAR file in the current working directory, use the following command:

native-image [options] -jar jarfile [imagename]

The default behavior of native-image is aligned with the java command which means you can pass the -jar, -cp, -m options to build with Native Image as you would normally do with java. For example, java -jar App.jar someArgument becomes native-image -jar App.jar and ./App someArgument.

Follow this guide to build a native executable from a JAR file.

From a Module #

You can also convert a modularized Java application into a native executable.

The command to build a native executable from a Java module is:

native-image [options] --module <module>[/<mainclass>] [options]

For more information about how to produce a native executable from a modular Java application, see Building a HelloWorld Java Module into a Native Executable.

Build Configuration #

There many options you can pass to the native-image tool to configure the build process. Run native-image --help to see the full list. The options passed to native-image are evaluated left-to-right.

For different build tweaks and to learn more about build time configuration, see Native Image Build Configuration.

Native Image will output the progress and various statistics during the build. To learn more about the output and the different build phases, see Build Output. For more detailed insights regarding the contents of a native executable, see Build Reports.

Native Image and Third-Party Libraries #

For more complex applications that use external libraries, you must provide the native-image tool with metadata.

Building a standalone binary with native-image takes place under a “closed world assumption”. The native-image tool performs an analysis to see which classes, methods, and fields within your application are reachable and must be included in the native executable. The analysis is static: it does not run your application. This means that all the bytecode in your application that can be called at runtime must be known (observed and analyzed) at build time.

The analysis can determine some cases of dynamic class loading, but it cannot always exhaustively predict all usages of the Java Native Interface (JNI), Java Reflection, Dynamic Proxy objects, or class path resources. To deal with these dynamic features of Java, you inform the analysis with details of the classes that use Reflection, Proxy, and so on, or what classes to be dynamically loaded. To achieve this, you either provide the native-image tool with JSON-formatted configuration files or pre-compute metadata in the code.

To learn more about metadata, ways to provide it, and supported metadata types, see Reachability Metadata. To automatically collect metadata for your application, see Automatic Collection of Metadata.

Some applications may need additional configuration to be compiled with Native Image. For more details, see Native Image Compatibility Guide.

Native Image can also interop with native languages through a custom API. Using this API, you can specify custom native entry points into your Java application and build it into a native shared library. To learn more, see Interoperability with Native Code.