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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 the main 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 JAR files.
• native-image [options] -jar jarfile [imagename] [options] to build a 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. For an overview of options that can be passed to native-image, see here.

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