This guide covers:
-
Compiling the application to a native executable
-
Packaging the native executable in a container
This guide takes as input the application developed in the Getting Started Guide.
Prerequisites
To complete this guide, you need:
-
less than 15 minutes
-
an IDE
-
JDK 8 installed with
JAVA_HOME
configured appropriately -
GraalVM version 19.3.1 installed and configured appropriately
-
A working container runtime (Docker, podman)
-
The code of the application developed in the Getting Started Guide.
Supporting native compilation in C
What does having a working C developer environment mean?
|
Configuring GraalVM
If you cannot install GraalVM, you can use a multi-stage Docker build to run Maven inside a Docker container that embeds GraalVM. There is an explanation of how to do this at the end of this guide. |
Version 19.3.1 is required. Using the community edition is enough.
-
Install GraalVM if you haven’t already. You have a few options for this:
-
Use platform-specific install tools like homebrew or sdkman.
-
Download the appropriate Community Edition archive from https://github.com/graalvm/graalvm-ce-builds/releases, and unpack it like you would any other JDK.
-
-
Configure the runtime environment. Set
GRAALVM_HOME
environment variable to the GraalVM installation directory, for example:export GRAALVM_HOME=$HOME/Development/graalvm/
On macOS, point the variable to the
Home
sub-directory:export GRAALVM_HOME=$HOME/Development/graalvm/Contents/Home/
-
Install the
native-image
tool usinggu install
:${GRAALVM_HOME}/bin/gu install native-image
Some previous releases of GraalVM included the
native-image
tool by default. This is no longer the case; it must be installed as a second step after GraalVM itself is installed. Note: there is an outstanding issue using GraalVM with macOS Catalina. -
(Optional) Set the
JAVA_HOME
environment variable to the GraalVM installation directory.export JAVA_HOME=${GRAALVM_HOME}
-
(Optional) Add the GraalVM
bin
directory to the pathexport PATH=${GRAALVM_HOME}/bin:$PATH
Issues using GraalVM with macOS Catalina
GraalVM binaries are not (yet) notarized for macOS Catalina as reported in this GraalVM issue. This means that you may see the following error when using
Use the following command to recursively delete the
|
Solution
We recommend that you follow the instructions in the next sections and package the application step by step. However, you can go right to the completed example.
Clone the Git repository: git clone https://github.com/quarkusio/quarkus-quickstarts.git
, or download an archive.
The solution is located in the getting-started
directory.
Producing a native executable
The native executable for our application will contain the application code, required libraries, Java APIs, and a reduced version of a VM. The smaller VM base improves the startup time of the application and produces a minimal disk footprint.
If you have generated the application from the previous tutorial, you can find in the pom.xml
the following profile:
<profiles>
<profile>
<id>native</id>
<properties>
<quarkus.package.type>native</quarkus.package.type>
</properties>
</profile>
</profiles>
You can provide custom options for the Another possibility is to include the You can find more information about how to configure the native image building process in the Configuring the Native Image section below. |
We use a profile because, you will see very soon, packaging the native executable takes a few minutes. You could just pass -Dquarkus.package.type=native as a property on the command line, however it is better to use a profile as this allows native image tests to also be run.
Create a native executable using: ./mvnw package -Pnative
.
In addition to the regular files, the build also produces target/getting-started-1.0-SNAPSHOT-runner
.
You can run it using: ./target/getting-started-1.0-SNAPSHOT-runner
.
Testing the native executable
Producing a native executable can lead to a few issues, and so it’s also a good idea to run some tests against the application running in the native file.
In the pom.xml
file, the native
profile contains:
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-failsafe-plugin</artifactId>
<version>${surefire-plugin.version}</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<goals>
<goal>integration-test</goal>
<goal>verify</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<systemProperties>
<native.image.path>${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}-runner</native.image.path>
</systemProperties>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
This instructs the failsafe-maven-plugin to run integration-test and indicates the location of the produced native executable.
Then, open the src/test/java/org/acme/quickstart/NativeGreetingResourceIT.java
. It contains:
package org.acme.quickstart;
import io.quarkus.test.junit.NativeImageTest;
@NativeImageTest (1)
public class NativeGreetingResourceIT extends GreetingResourceTest { (2)
// Run the same tests
}
1 | Use another test runner that starts the application from the native file before the tests.
The executable is retrieved using the native.image.path system property configured in the Failsafe Maven Plugin. |
2 | We extend our previous tests, but you can also implement your tests |
To see the NativeGreetingResourceIT
run against the native executable, use ./mvnw verify -Pnative
:
./mvnw verify -Pnative
...
[getting-started-1.0-SNAPSHOT-runner:18820] universe: 587.26 ms
[getting-started-1.0-SNAPSHOT-runner:18820] (parse): 2,247.59 ms
[getting-started-1.0-SNAPSHOT-runner:18820] (inline): 1,985.70 ms
[getting-started-1.0-SNAPSHOT-runner:18820] (compile): 14,922.77 ms
[getting-started-1.0-SNAPSHOT-runner:18820] compile: 20,361.28 ms
[getting-started-1.0-SNAPSHOT-runner:18820] image: 2,228.30 ms
[getting-started-1.0-SNAPSHOT-runner:18820] write: 364.35 ms
[getting-started-1.0-SNAPSHOT-runner:18820] [total]: 52,777.76 ms
[INFO]
[INFO] --- maven-failsafe-plugin:2.22.1:integration-test (default) @ getting-started ---
[INFO]
[INFO] -------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] T E S T S
[INFO] -------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Running org.acme.quickstart.NativeGreetingResourceIT
Executing [/data/home/gsmet/git/quarkus-quickstarts/getting-started/target/getting-started-1.0-SNAPSHOT-runner, -Dquarkus.http.port=8081, -Dtest.url=http://localhost:8081, -Dquarkus.log.file.path=build/quarkus.log]
2019-04-15 11:33:20,348 INFO [io.quarkus] (main) Quarkus 999-SNAPSHOT started in 0.002s. Listening on: http://[::]:8081
2019-04-15 11:33:20,348 INFO [io.quarkus] (main) Installed features: [cdi, resteasy]
[INFO] Tests run: 2, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 1.387 s - in org.acme.quickstart.NativeGreetingResourceIT
...
By default, Quarkus waits for 60 seconds for the native image to start before automatically failing the native tests. This
duration can be changed using the |
By default, native tests runs using the prod
profile.
This can be overridden using the quarkus.test.native-image-profile
property.
For example, in your application.properties
file, add: quarkus.test.native-image-profile=test
.
Alternatively, you can run your tests with: ./mvnw verify -Pnative -Dquarkus.test.native-image-profile=test
.
However, don’t forget that when the native executable is built the prod
profile is enabled.
So, the profile you enable this way must be compatible with the produced executable.
Excluding tests when running as a native executable
When running tests this way, the only things that actually run natively are you application endpoints, which you can only test via HTTP calls. Your test code does not actually run natively, so if you are testing code that does not call your HTTP endpoints, it’s probably not a good idea to run them as part of native tests.
If you share your test class between JVM and native executions like we advise above, you can mark certain tests
with the @DisabledOnNativeImage
annotation in order to only run them on the JVM.
Testing an existing native executable
It is also possible to re-run the tests against a native executable that has already been built. To do this run
./mvnw test-compile failsafe:integration-test
. This will discover the existing native image and run the tests against it using
failsafe.
If the process cannot find the native image for some reason, or you want to test a native image that is no longer in the
target directory you can specify the executable with the -Dnative.image.path=
system property.
Creating a container
Before going further, be sure to have a working container runtime (Docker, podman) environment. |
You can run the application in a container using the JAR produced by the Quarkus Maven Plugin. However, in this guide we focus on creating a container image using the produced native executable.
By default, the native executable is tailored for your operating system (Linux, macOS, Windows etc). Because the container may not use the same executable format as the one produced by your operating system, we will instruct the Maven build to produce an executable from inside a container:
./mvnw package -Pnative -Dquarkus.native.container-build=true
You can also select the container runtime to use with:
These are normal Quarkus config properties, so if you always want to build in a container
it is recommended you add these to your |
The produced executable will be a 64 bit Linux executable, so depending on your operating system it may no longer be runnable.
However, it’s not an issue as we are going to copy it to a container.
The project generation has provided a Dockerfile.native
in the src/main/docker
directory with the following content:
FROM registry.access.redhat.com/ubi8/ubi-minimal
WORKDIR /work/
COPY target/*-runner /work/application
RUN chmod 775 /work
EXPOSE 8080
CMD ["./application", "-Dquarkus.http.host=0.0.0.0"]
Then, if you didn’t delete the generated native executable, you can build the docker image with:
docker build -f src/main/docker/Dockerfile.native -t quarkus-quickstart/getting-started .
And finally, run it with:
docker run -i --rm -p 8080:8080 quarkus-quickstart/getting-started
Interested by tiny Docker images, check the distroless version. |
Creating a container with a multi-stage Docker build
The previous section showed you how to build a native executable using Maven, but implicitly required that the proper GraalVM version be installed on the building machine (be it your local machine or your CI/CD infrastructure).
In cases where the GraalVM requirement cannot be met, you can use Docker to perform the Maven build by using a multi-stage Docker build. A multi-stage Docker build is like two Dockerfile files combined in one, the first is used to build the artifact used by the second.
In this guide we will use the first stage to generate the native executable using Maven and the second stage to create our runtime image.
## Stage 1 : build with maven builder image with native capabilities
FROM quay.io/quarkus/centos-quarkus-maven:19.3.1-java8 AS build
COPY src /usr/src/app/src
COPY pom.xml /usr/src/app
USER root
RUN chown -R quarkus /usr/src/app
USER quarkus
RUN mvn -f /usr/src/app/pom.xml -Pnative clean package
## Stage 2 : create the docker final image
FROM registry.access.redhat.com/ubi8/ubi-minimal
WORKDIR /work/
COPY --from=build /usr/src/app/target/*-runner /work/application
RUN chmod 775 /work
EXPOSE 8080
CMD ["./application", "-Dquarkus.http.host=0.0.0.0"]
Save this file in src/main/docker/Dockerfile.multistage
as it is not included in the getting started quickstart.
Replace the -java8 in the base image with -java11 if you want to use Java 11. Before launching our Docker build, we need to update the default |
docker build -f src/main/docker/Dockerfile.multistage -t quarkus-quickstart/getting-started .
And finally, run it with:
docker run -i --rm -p 8080:8080 quarkus-quickstart/getting-started
If you need SSL support in your native executable, you can easily include the necessary libraries in your Docker image. Please see our Using SSL With Native Executables guide for more information. |
Configuring the Native Image
There are a lot of different configuration options that can affect how the native image is generated.
These are provided in application.properties
the same as any other config property.
The properties are shown below:
Configuration property fixed at build time - ️ Configuration property overridable at runtime
Type |
Default |
|
---|---|---|
Additional arguments to pass to the build process |
list of string |
|
If the HTTP url handler should be enabled, allowing you to do URL.openConnection() for HTTP URLs |
boolean |
|
If the HTTPS url handler should be enabled, allowing you to do URL.openConnection() for HTTPS URLs |
boolean |
|
If all security services should be added to the native image |
boolean |
|
boolean |
|
|
If all character sets should be added to the native image. This increases image size |
boolean |
|
The location of the Graal distribution |
string |
|
The location of the JDK |
|
|
The default maximum old generation size of the native image |
string |
|
If debug symbols should be included |
boolean |
|
If the native image build should wait for a debugger to be attached before running. This is an advanced option and is generally only intended for those familiar with GraalVM internals |
boolean |
|
If the debug port should be published when building with docker and debug-build-process is true |
boolean |
|
If the native image server should be restarted |
boolean |
|
If isolates should be enabled |
boolean |
|
If a JVM based 'fallback image' should be created if native image fails. This is not recommended, as this is functionally the same as just running the application in a JVM |
boolean |
|
If the native image server should be used. This can speed up compilation but can result in changes not always being picked up due to cache invalidation not working 100% |
boolean |
|
If all META-INF/services entries should be automatically registered |
boolean |
|
If the bytecode of all proxies should be dumped for inspection |
boolean |
|
If this build should be done using a container runtime. If this is set docker will be used by default, unless container-runtime is also set. |
boolean |
|
The docker image to use to do the image build |
string |
|
The container runtime (e.g. docker) that is used to do an image based build. If this is set then a container build is always done. |
string |
|
Options to pass to the container runtime |
list of string |
|
If the resulting image should allow VM introspection |
boolean |
|
If full stack traces are enabled in the resulting image |
boolean |
|
If reporting on call paths should be enabled |
boolean |
|
If exceptions should be reported with a full stack trace |
boolean |
|
If errors should be reported at runtime. This is a more relaxed setting, however it is not recommended as it means your application may fail at runtime if an unsupported feature is used by accident. |
boolean |
|
What’s next?
This guide covered the creation of a native (binary) executable for your application. It provides an application exhibiting a swift startup time and consuming less memory. However, there is much more.
We recommend continuing the journey with the deployment to Kubernetes and OpenShift.