How do Classpaths work with JAR files?

Question

Hey all,
I have in the manifest file a path to a folder, plugins. In it I have a dir and files myDir/*.* so when unzipped it has <install-dir>/plugins/myDir/*.*. In the MF file I indicate the plugins dir as part of the class-path. When I want to load a .class file from the myDir/ dir below plugins, and the classes in there do NOT have package names in them, how is that done? Every time I try to access a file via Class.forName() it says ClassNotFoundException. If I hard-code the string as "myDir/myplugin" or use package identifer "myDir.myplugin" it still doesn't work. I don't want to unzip a ton of files from each plugin in one dir. I want a more organized way of storing them. However, because plugins can be added after the file is unzipped, I can't specify all the locations of plugins/<dir> dir's in the MF file if more are added later. Is there a way to locate and load a class in ANY dir, even those that are NOT in the class-path? Please help me out if you know. Thanks.

Answer 1

You have two options:
1) Add a Class-Path entry for each plug-in directory, not just the plugins.
Class-Path: plugins/myDir plugins/yourDir2) Go ahead and put the plug-ins in separate packages - package handling makes doing plug-ins easier in the long run. Two ways:
package plugins.myDir;    // no Class-Path entry requiredor
package myDir;            // which works with your current Class-Path