CODEWITHSUNDEEP
eclipseclasspath
Anaphory
Anaphory

Reputation: 6431

Include one project's jar libraries in another project depending on the first

I am working on two projects in Eclipse.

Project A depends on some jar files that come with the project, and those jar files have been added to the “Libraries” tab in Project A's “Java Build Path” property in Eclipse.

Project B depends on Project A, as well as directly using some classes in some of those jar files in Project A's build path.

I had assumed that adding Project A to Project B's Java Build Class would also add the jars already in Project A's build path, but that appears not to be the case.

Do I have to manually add those jars to Project B's build class, or am I overlooking a setting? If so, why is that a useful standard behaviour?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 832

Answers (1)

T.D. Smith
T.D. Smith

Reputation: 994

You have to manually add the jars to project B's classpath.

Adding a project dependency means project A depends on the compiled output of project B. Project B's output (its compiled .class files) doesn't contain the .jar files it depends on.

Why is this? I don't know the rationale of the eclipse authors, but my guess is that they want to keep the classpath as simple and verbose as possible. Things can get confusing if you have multiple versions of the same library on the classpath.

In vanilla java you can provide directory names for the classpath. When loading a class, the JVM will search these directories in order. Eclipse encourages a stricter approach where each jar is specified manually. Note that you can add multiple jars at once, so it's trivial to add all of project B's jars to project A's classpath.

Upvotes: 2

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