Dependencies

If you want to write real scripts you will want to use some java libraries. To specify dependencies you use gradle-style locators or links to Git sources. Below are examples for log4j.

Using //DEPS

///usr/bin/env jbang "$0" "$@" ; exit $?
(1)
//DEPS ch.qos.reload4j:reload4j:1.2.19

import static java.lang.System.out;

import org.apache.log4j.Logger;
import org.apache.log4j.BasicConfigurator;

import java.util.Arrays;

class classpath_example {

	static final Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(classpath_example.class);

	public static void main(String[] args) {
		BasicConfigurator.configure(); (2)
		logger.info("Welcome to jbang");

		Arrays.asList(args).forEach(arg -> logger.warn("arg: " + arg));
		logger.info("Hello from Java!");
	}
}
1 //DEPS must be placed at the start of line and can be one or more space separated dependencies.
2 Minimal logging setup - required by log4j.

Now when you run this, the first time with no existing dependencies installed you should get an output like this:

$ ./classpath_example.java
[jbang] Resolving dependencies...
[jbang]     Resolving ch.qos.reload4j:reload4j:1.2.19...Done
[jbang] Dependencies resolved
0 [main] INFO classpath_example  - Welcome to jbang
1 [main] INFO classpath_example  - Hello from Java!

Managed dependencies ("BOM POM"'s) [Experimental]

When using libraries and frameworks it can get tedious to mange and update multiple versions. For that jbang started since 0.62 to support so called "BOM POM"'s which are commonly used for managing versions.

You use it by having as the very first dependency a @pom reference. This first reference will be used to define your managed dependences. Below is an example how that could look like when using Quarkus:

//DEPS io.quarkus:quarkus-bom:2.11.2.Final@pom
//DEPS io.quarkus:quarkus-resteasy
//DEPS io.quarkus:quarkus-smallrye-openapi
//DEPS io.quarkus:quarkus-swagger-ui

Notice the @pom at first line and then following dependencies are not required to use explicit versions.

At the moment jbang support only one bom pom; in future it should be expanded to multiple. For now you can workaround this by reusing a published pom that includes all the dependency management sections you need.

Instead of gradle-style locators you can also use URLs to projects on GitHub, GitLab or BitBucket. Links to those projects will then be converted to artifacts references on jitpack. You can use links to the root of the project, to the root of a tag/release and to specific commits.

If the project you link to has multiple modules and you want only a specific module you can specify the name of the module by appending #name-of-module to the URL.

And finally if the link you provide is to a specific branch of the project then you need to append #:SNAPSHOT to the URL. (If you have both a branch and a module name then use #name-of-module:SNAPSHOT)

Table 1. Examples of links and their resulting locator:

Link

Locator

https://github.com/jbangdev/jbang

com.github.jbangdev:jbang:HEAD-SNAPSHOT

https://github.com/jbangdev/jbang/tree/v1.2.3

com.github.jbangdev:jbang:v1.2.3

https://github.com/jbangdev/jbang/tree/f1f34b031…​

com.github.jbangdev:jbang:f1f34b031d

https://github.com/jbangdev/jbang#mymodule

com.github.jbangdev.jbang:mymodule:HEAD-SNAPSHOT

https://github.com/jbangdev/jbang/tree/mybranch#:SNAPSHOT

com.github.jbangdev:jbang:mybranch-SNAPSHOT

https://github.com/jbangdev/jbang/tree/mybranch#mymodule:SNAPSHOT

com.github.jbangdev.jbang.mymodule:mybranch-SNAPSHOT

Offline mode

In case you prefer jbang to just fail-fast when dependencies cannot be found locally you can run jbang in offline mode using jbang -o or jbang --offline. In this mode jbang will simply fail if dependencies have not been cached already.

Downloading Sources

JBang can download sources for your dependencies and make them available in your IDE. jbang edit will do it automatically but you can also enable it globally by setting environment variable JBANG_DOWNLOAD_SOURCES to true.

Repositories

By default jbang uses maven central. In past it used jcenter but with its imminent shutdown deemed best to use central.

And if you are using the above mentioned URL dependencies jitpack will be added automatically as well.

If that is not sufficient for you or need some custom repo you can use //REPOS id=repourl to state which repository URL to use.

For ease of use there are also a few shorthands to use popular commonly available repositories.

Short name

Description

central

Maven Central (https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/)

jcenter

https://jcenter.bintray.com/

google

https://maven.google.com/

jitpack

https://jitpack.io/

Following example enables use of Maven Central and add a custom acme repository.

//REPOS mavencentral,acme=https://maven.acme.local/maven

If you add any //REPOS lines jbang will no longer consult mavencentral thus you need to explicitly add it if needed.

For secure authentication jbang will honor ~/.m2/settings-security.xml for configuring username/passwords.

By default, jbang uses ~/.m2 as local repository, but this can be overwritten by the environment variable JBANG_REPO.

Using @Grab

There is also support for using Groovy lang style @Grab syntax.

///usr/bin/env jbang "$0" "$@" ; exit $?

import static java.lang.System.out;

import org.apache.log4j.Logger;
import org.apache.log4j.BasicConfigurator;

import java.util.Arrays;

import groovy.lang.Grab; (1)
import groovy.lang.Grapes;
import groovy.lang.GrabResolver;

@GrabResolver("central") (2)
@GrabResolver(name="acme", root="https://maven.acme.local/maven")
@Grapes({ (3)
		@Grab(group = "ch.qos.reload4j", module = "reload4j", version = "1.2.19"), (4)
		@Grab(group = "org.apache.groovy", module = "groovy", version = "4.0.0"), (5)
})
class classpath_example {

	static final Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(classpath_example.class);

	public static void main(String[] args) {
		BasicConfigurator.configure();
		Arrays.asList(args).forEach(out::println);
	}
}
1 Import needed to make the compiler be okey with @Grab annotation.
2 Using GrabResolver to enable mavenCentral and custom acme repository
3 In Groovy you normally put @Grab on import statements. That is not allowed in Java thus when having multiple imports you need to put them in a @Grapes annotation first.
4 jbang will grab any @Grab annotation and assume it is declaring dependencies.
5 In particular to be able to import groovy.lang.* annotations, groovy itself must be in the list of dependencies.

System properties and Environment variables

In dependencies you can refer to environment and system properties to parameterize the dependencies. It uses the format ${[env.]propertyname:<defaultvalue>}.

Furthermore to align with properties commonly used to make dependency resolution portable jbang exposes properties similar to what the os-maven-plugin does. Plus for ease of use for javafx dependencies it also setups a property named ${os.detected.jfxname}.

Examples:

${env.USER} = 'max'
${os.name} = 'Mac OS X'
${non.existing.key:empty} = 'empty'
${os.detected.jfxname} = 'mac'

This can be put to use in //DEPS like so:

//DEPS org.openjfx:javafx-graphics:11.0.2:${os.detected.jfxname}

Here we use the properties to avoid hardcoding your script to a specific operating system.

JavaFX

If jbang detects you have a javafx- dependency in your list of dependencies it will if you java command supports Java modules automatically set the necessary --module-path and --add-modules.

See jfx.java and jfxtiles.java for examples of this.