RE: Declaring Java classes and methods

["Hall, Philip" <phall@xxxxxxxx>]

> I had an application that used a component dependent on a lot of open
> source
> JARS, and I didnt want to type them all in to the classpath one by one.
> So I created custom classloader that I could point at a directory, and it
> would add all the jars to the classpath.

You can achieve the same results as that by using the Class-Path identifier in 
your JAR file's Manifest.mf file, for your application. It's values can be 
relative or absolute, for example;

Manifest-Version: 1.0
Created-By: Ant version 1.5.1 compiled on October 2 2002
Built-Date: June 16, 2004 01:03 PM
Build-Machine: unknown
Build-Mode: Debug JAR
JVM-Implementation-Version: 1.4.1_02-b06
JVM-Implementation-Vendor: Sun Microsystems Inc.
Class-Path: xerces.jar castor.jar .\..\someother.jar

The default classloader will try to load them from, and relative to, the 
location of your JAR file. You don't need to enter any class path entries on 
the command line.

--phil