title: creating executable program from eclipse on mac
body: <p>i have been searching for a while to find this question, and i have certainly found this question asked before, but the answers have not worked for me. </p>
  
  <p>to give a little information about what i am trying to achieve:
  i am trying to apply for a job that says "wow us with your cover letter and guarantee a response," so i decided to make a very very simple program that uses what little knowledge i have to interact with the person and work in my cover letter. i have a bit of the program written and realized that i do not know how to make the program run outside of eclipse. furthermore, i need to make sure that it is something that will work on another computer, which is not likely going to be a mac.</p>
  
  <p>i have already tried to export as an executable jar file, which gave me a .class file. that will not open - it gives an error telling me to check the console for possible errors. i already have jre installed and jdk. i also tried downloading other apps that i was led to in my search for an answer, such as jsmooth (not realizing it is only for windows) and lingon. i'm pretty sure those are not at all what i am really looking for. </p>
  
  <p>i am trying really hard to not contribute to another duplicate question, but i can't seem to find the answer i'm looking for. </p>
  
  <p>another thought - i am trying to make it executable by double clicking the icon, just the same as i would expect any other application to do. i say that because i am hoping to be able to avoid going through the back door with terminal or the console, because that is something with which i have no experience. </p>
  
  <p>this is one question i found that is very similar:
  <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4765371/how-can-i-create-executable-file-for-the-program-written-on-java">how can I create executable file for the program written on Java?</a></p>
  
  <p>i tried using java web start with the same lack of results. also, the writer of this question is asking for help with windows.</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76314/how-can-i-open-java-class-files-in-a-human-readable-way">How can I open Java .class files in a human-readable way?</a></p>
  
  <p>this one doesn't appear to be for a running a program, but for reading the code.</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/908680/jar-file-not-opening-on-a-mac">JAR file not opening on a Mac</a></p>
  
  <p>this one is the most similar to what i am asking and the writer of the question was seeing what i am seeing in the warning, but this is from 2009 and it doesn't make sense to me.</p>
  
  <p>sorry to go on like this, but i am trying to make it clear that i have tried to figure this out on my own and am running into a wall.</p>
  
  <p>any help would be much appreciated!</p>