Learning Java, 7th Edition

Chapter 3. Tools of the Trade

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While you will almost certainly do the majority of your Java development in an IDE such as VS Code or IntelliJ IDEA, all of the core tools you need to build Java applications are included in the JDK that you downloaded in “Installing the JDK”. When you write Java source code, the Java compiler—javac—turns your source into usable bytecode. When you want to test that bytecode, the Java command itself—java—executes your programs. When you have all of your classes compiled and working together, the Java archive tool—jar—that allows us to bundle for distribution. In this chapter, we’ll discuss command-line tools that you use to compile, run, and package Java applications. There are many developer tools included in the JDK, such as jshell for interactive work or javap for decompiling class files. We won’t discuss all of them in this book, but you can dig into the details with Oracle’s JDK Tool Specifications.

We want you to be comfortable with these command-line tools ...