Technical Advice related to Using Java

This page is very much a work in progress. It was substantially revised 2009-03-09. It was revised again 2012-01-28.

Building .jar files

A .jar file is a Java Archive file (like a .tar file is a tape archive file). That is, a .jar file enables you to bundle multiple files into a single archive file. Typically a JAR file contains the class files and auxiliary resources associated with applets and applications [*].

.jar files can be created with the command-line utility which is described in the links below. A very typical command line would look something like (assuming lab4 is directory with .java and .class files)

  cd ../.. ; jar cf my-proj.jar ./cpsc101/lab4

This would create a .jar file called my-proj.jar that contains all of the files in the lab4 directory

• SunOracle's technical description of the jar command for Solaris.
• SunOracle's tutorial on building jar files.

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CLASSPATH and package information

There still isn’t much here other than the following links.

• Tutorial information from SunOracle about the PATH and the CLASSPATH.
• More information about setting the CLASSPATH from SunOracle.