#26 JAR packaging required

[Irwin]

JAR file packaging is required.

-We need a packaging organization.
-We need to edit the build file to make sure it can build everything
properly and can make it easy to distribute the files.

Due to experimentation on 2002-11-24, I have come up with the
following so far:

MANIFEST must refer to all 3rd party libraries by name and location
build file must be able to copy all of our files in an appropriate
location.

This is what a standard install directory should likely look like
inside the dist folder:

/dist
/dist/jsqledit.properties
/dist/aliases.xml
/dist/drivers.xml
/dist/bin/jsqledit.sh
/dist/bin/jsqledit.bat
/dist/lib/jsqledit.jar
/dist/lib/jdom.jar
/dist/lib/mm.mysql-2.0.11-bin.jar

This must be added to the build.xml file.

We must also package licensing information and so forth in our
central jar file.

[Irwin]

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At it stands right now, I cannot get any dynamic class loading working. I
have been trying for the past 10 hours and all combinations don't work.

The situation is:

-If you have Application A that is in a JAR file, you can not reference
Library L that is in a JAR file AT ALL, unless Library L is listed in
Application A's MANIFEST.MF class path.

Because a MANIFEST.MF is packaged at build time, it will be impossible
for the client to add to the manifest if we distribute our app in JAR
format.

However if we leave it in class format, then the client only has to add it
to the class path.

It must be possible to somehow load up a class from inside a JAR file
from the class path even if your own app is a JAR because SquirrelSQL
and other applications that use Plugins are able to do so. However, I
can't figure it out. SquirrelSQL uses some sort of object cache and a
reference to some XML and then a Class.forName (similar to how we do
it).

But I can't figure it out and have already spent 10 hours doing that when
I could have probably ended up finishing all the other aspects of the
project. Risks, risks....