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Native Image Build Overview

The syntax of the native-image command is:

• native-image [options] <mainclass> [imagename] [options] to build a native binary from <mainclass> class in the current working directory. The classpath may optionally be provided with the -cp <classpath> option where <classpath> is a colon-separated (on Windows, semicolon-separated) list of paths to directories and jars.
• native-image [options] -jar jarfile [imagename] [options] to build native binary from a JAR file.
• native-image [options] -m <module>/<mainClass> [imagename] [options] to build a native binary from a Java module.

The options passed to native-image are evaluated from left to right.

The options fall into three categories:

• Image generation options - for the full list, run native-image --help
• Macro options
• Non-standard options - subject to change through a deprecation cycle, run native-image --help-extra for the full list.

Find a complete list of options for the native-image tool here.

There are some expert level options that a Native Image developer may find useful or needed, for example, the option to dump graphs of the native-image builder or enable assertions at image run time. This information can be found in Native Image Hosted and Runtime Options.

Further Reading #

If you are new to GraalVM Native Image or have little experience using it, see the Native Image Basics to better understand some key aspects before going further.

For more tweaks and how to properly configure the native-image tool, see Build Configuration.

Native Image will output the progress and various statistics when building the native binary. To learn more about the output, and the different build phases, see Build Output.