This project shows how you can build a tiny Docker image based on the google distroless docker base image with a custom modular Java run-time image for your app.
After building the docker image you can start it with
docker run agilhard/maven-jlink-distroless-example
You will need at least Java 9: This project uses jlink to assemble modules and their dependencies into a custom Java run-time image.
maven-jlink-plugin is still in alpha version and have some issues:
- The current version avaiable at Maven Central repository (3.0.0-alpha-1) has a bug (See: MJLINK-4). We're using a SNAPSHOT version (3.0.0-alpha-2) and unpredictable errors may occur with SNAPSHOT updates.
- JDK
jmodsfolder is always relative tojlinkbinary location and the generated Java run-time image may NOT be compatible with the Docker base image (See: MJLINK-6).
maven-jar-plugin don't know how to define a module with a main-class (See: MJAR-238).
This example here worked when it was created some time ago.
It may no longer work now due to incompatible changes on the Source Code of the maven-jlink-plugin in the meantime.
There is another example of doing this which is using a forked and enhanced version of that maven-jlink-plugin, the jlink-jpackager-maven-plugin.
This other example is guaranteed to work better and should work still.
You can find it here: jlink-distroless-maven-example.