JAR (file Format)

JAR (file Format)

In software, JAR (Java ARchive) is an archive file format typically used to aggregate many Java class files and associated metadata and resources (text, images and so on) into one file to distribute application software or libraries on the Java platform.

JAR files are built on the ZIP file format and have the .jar file extension. Computer users can create or extract JAR files using the jar command that comes with a JDK. They can also use zip tools to do so; however, the order of entries in the zip file headers is important when compressing, as the manifest often needs to be first.