How to include all dependent Jars within a single non-executable jar?
I am stuck in a very common problem.
I am plugging my jar (which has many dependencies on third party vendor) into an application server lib directory. If I just copy my jar along with its dependencies into server lib then server classpath becomes to long and hence server is not able to work. Therefore I want to package this Jar with all its dependencies in a single jar so that server's classpath doesn't become too long. I found on various forums that there is a utility to do this i.e. OneJar. But this utility works on executable jar. In my case, my final jar will not be executable.
Also I tried ZIPFileSetGroup utility provided by ANT but that is causing security issues with Manifest file.
Can you please help me in resolving this issue?
Thanks!
Answer
If you use Maven to build, you can use the maven dependency plugin and use the copy-dependency task. It will copy all dependencies into your jar file when it creates it.
If you manually add the jars to your jar file, then you need to make sure your jar file has a Manifest.mf file in it and specify the main class and classpath inside of that.
Manifest-Version: 1.0
Main-Class: com.mypackage.MainClass
Class-Path: my.jar log4j.jar
Another option may be to build an .ear file, that is usually how you see enterprise apps or a .war file for web apps when they package specific jar files with them. It sounds like you are using a server, so one of those formats may be a better fit for you.