On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 5:02 PM, Raymond Feng <[email protected]> wrote: > I have some concerns over the changes [1][2] to add nested jars onto the > classpath of a jar contribution without consulting the manifest. > > Jar is a standard packaging scheme [3] in java, we shouldn't try to invent a > new classloading behavior. For jar, the Class-Path header in > META-INF/MANIFEST.MF is used to extend the classpath. > > Other standard archives such as JEE EAR/WAR or OSGi bundle > (Bundle-ClassPath) defines how the nested jars are honored using additional > manifest files or deployment descriptors. We should respect them. > > There is no standard way to deal with zip in Java classloading. I'm fine > with the default behavior to include all nested jars on the classpath. Maybe > we should also require a manifest file in the zip to provide the inner jars > to the classpath. >
I'm not sure if you're objecting to supporting zip contributions with nested jars or that currently the change to do that doesn't discriminated between zip and jar contributions so its possible to nest jars in jars? I don't think we should require a manifest in a zip contribution as the spec doesn't say thats required, i guess we could support an optional manifest to enable defining only a subset of the nested jars get used though it doesn't seem like a high priority to me. ...ant
