Jar Files: Kill me NOW.

[Philippe Desrosiers]

I want to create an executable JAR file, with the following structure:

/com/mycompany/whatever/(All my classes go here)
/lib/(All my dependency JAR files go here)

Seems like, no matter what I put in the Class-Path entry of Manifest.mf, Java can't find the dependency jars in the embedded /lib folder. I've tried many variations on the following:

Class-Path: lib/depJar1.jar lib/depJar2.jar

or

Class-Path: ../lib/depJar1.jar

or

Class-Path: /lib/depJar1.jar

Nothing works, and, amazingly, Google is silent on this topic (as hard as that may be to believe).

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

[Paul Clapham]

Does that word "embedded" mean what I think it does?

The dependent jars are supposed to be in the lib directory under the directory where the executable jar is located. Not inside the executable jar.

[Uli Hofstoetter]

AFAIK the standard classloader does not support this.

Maybe the classworlds framework can help you.

[Philippe Desrosiers]

Paul Clapham wrote:Does that word "embedded" mean what I think it does?

The dependent jars are supposed to be in the lib directory under the directory where the executable jar is located. Not inside the executable jar.

Okay, I'll check this out. I guess, coming from a servlet-development world, I'm just used to embedding them, without worrying about wether the WAR file gets exploded or not. Never occurred to me this could be different for JAR files.

thanks,