Aside from googling....

[Print Guy]

and searching through the results, is there any one place where it is
possible to look up the library required to satisfy an import.

Example,

A program wants to import javax.jnlp but the package is part of another
library, not on the standard build path (under Eclipse). So I need to
add a library to the build path...but how to find out which one... is
there one place that has this information available?

 

[Philipp Leitner]

and searching through the results, is there any one place where it is
possible to look up the library required to satisfy an import.

Example,

A program wants to import javax.jnlp but the package is part of another
library, not on the standard build path (under Eclipse). So I need to
add a library to the build path...but how to find out which one... is
there one place that has this information available?

I don't know of any such directory, but it may be a good idea to put
something like that up ... I am thinking of a rather simple index,
where you could enter a class name and the directory would show all
known jar libraries that contain such a class (and possibly allow to
download the libs directly, since most of them are OSS anyway) ...
maybe a good idea ...

/philipp

 

[Print Guy]

I don't know of any such directory, but it may be a good idea to put
something like that up ... I am thinking of a rather simple index,
where you could enter a class name and the directory would show all
known jar libraries that contain such a class (and possibly allow to
download the libs directly, since most of them are OSS anyway) ...
maybe a good idea ...

/philipp

So how would a project like this get started? Is there some sort of
Open Source Project that can be suggested?

 

[Mark Space]

I don't know of any such directory, but it may be a good idea to put
something like that up ... I am thinking of a rather simple index,
where you could enter a class name and the directory would show all
known jar libraries that contain such a class (and possibly allow to
download the libs directly, since most of them are OSS anyway) ...
maybe a good idea ...

/philipp

Shouldn't library requirements be in the documentation? If you're using
an application, plug-in, or other library that doesn't document it's
requirements clearly and precisely, I'd suggest a stern note to the
authors about things they should have learned in their lower division
courses, and then deleting the darn thing off your hard drive.

 

[I Am The Walrus]

Shouldn't library requirements be in the documentation? If you're using
an application, plug-in, or other library that doesn't document it's
requirements clearly and precisely, I'd suggest a stern note to the
authors about things they should have learned in their lower division
courses, and then deleting the darn thing off your hard drive.

Agreed, but alot of the books I have still are using the hard way to
create the jar's or war's or ear's. I use eclipse as much as possible,
so I'd like to be able to know what packages I have to add to my
classpath to handle the imports.

 

[Patricia Shanahan]

Agreed, but alot of the books I have still are using the hard way to
create the jar's or war's or ear's. I use eclipse as much as possible,
so I'd like to be able to know what packages I have to add to my
classpath to handle the imports.

If a centralized database could be set up in a suitable format, maybe
there could be an Eclipse plug-in that would react to not finding an
import by recommending a package to add. It could start by searching
local disks for the package, and if that fails, ask whether to download it.

Patricia

 

[Philipp Leitner]

I agree that JAR dependencies should be (and probably most often are)
documented, but I guess doing a quick query on a well-known database
could solve the occasional "but is this damn thing looking for" problem
a lot quicker than having to scan the documentation for it...

Well, how would you get started? I guess the first thing would be to
come with a good name for it register a domain and a server
(perhaps with quite some bandwidth, if the service catches on), and
think about how you can finance the project. Then you would start to
collect well-known Java libraries (the Sun ones, the Apache ones,
etc...), write a Java app or script (Groovy might be be cool for that)
that can automatically scan a Java Jar file (or ear, or war, or
whatever) for the classes, packages, whatever, that it contains and
outputs this information to a database or XML format. Then you would
think about how you can make the information accessible on your web
page, for humans as well as in an A2A way (Web Services anyone??) ...
and so forth ...

I think the most interesting question to solve is the "financing" part
- technically it should be rather painless really ...

If anybody is interested in going for a project like that you could
drop me a short email (philipp DOT leitner AT gmx DOT at) ... I won't
be able to take the lead, but I might have the time to commit a little
input to the project.

/philipp

 

[Daniel Dyer]

I agree that JAR dependencies should be (and probably most often are)
documented, but I guess doing a quick query on a well-known database
could solve the occasional "but is this damn thing looking for" problem
a lot quicker than having to scan the documentation for it...

Well, how would you get started? I guess the first thing would be to
come with a good name for it register a domain and a server
(perhaps with quite some bandwidth, if the service catches on), and
think about how you can finance the project. Then you would start to
collect well-known Java libraries (the Sun ones, the Apache ones,
etc...), write a Java app or script (Groovy might be be cool for that)
that can automatically scan a Java Jar file (or ear, or war, or
whatever) for the classes, packages, whatever, that it contains and
outputs this information to a database or XML format. Then you would
think about how you can make the information accessible on your web
page, for humans as well as in an A2A way (Web Services anyone??) ...
and so forth ...

I think the most interesting question to solve is the "financing" part
- technically it should be rather painless really ...

If anybody is interested in going for a project like that you could
drop me a short email (philipp DOT leitner AT gmx DOT at) ... I won't
be able to take the lead, but I might have the time to commit a little
input to the project.

Sounds like a Java equivalent of RPMfind (http://rpmfind.net/).

Dan.

 

[Print Guy]

I did a google search for "jar file scan" and found this program...
http://www.inetfeedback.com/jarscan/

haven't tried it yet

I'm going to give it a shot and see if I can come up with
something...maybe for starts an excel/oo spreadsheet in pdf format and
put it on my website...

 

[Philipp Leitner]

I did a google search for "jar file scan" and found this program...
http://www.inetfeedback.com/jarscan/

haven't tried it yet

hmm, looks as if it scans only your local disc though - would be pretty
useless then, I'm afraid ...

/philipp

 

[Print Guy]

hmm, looks as if it scans only your local disc though - would be pretty
useless then, I'm afraid ...

/philipp

I have started working on something.... basically I'm executing a jar
tf on each and every jar file on my system that may contain a
package.... once I have it all done, I'll try to create a PDF out of
it and put it somewhere.....

 

[Print Guy]

hmm, looks as if it scans only your local disc though - would be pretty
useless then, I'm afraid ...

/philipp

I have started working on something.... basically I'm executing a jar
tf on each and every jar file on my system that may contain a
package.... once I have it all done, I'll try to create a PDF out of
it and put it somewhere.....

 

[joerg.froeber]

and searching through the results, is there any one place where it is
possible to look up the library required to satisfy an import.

Example,

A program wants to import javax.jnlp but the package is part of another
library, not on the standard build path (under Eclipse). So I need to
add a library to the build path...but how to find out which one... is
there one place that has this information available?

You can search for Jarfiles/Classes on the site
http://www.whatjar.net/index.jsp, but a search for javax.jnlp leads to
no result.
But it seems, that you can add jarfiles to their database.

 

[maaxiim]

Google has a new service in beta called Google Co-Op:

http://www.google.com/coop

if you sign up for the service and then register the
javasubscribedlinks.com .

Just go ahead and type javax.jnlp into the google search bar and it
finds:

Class/Interface Name
javax.jnlp.BasicService
javax.jnlp.ClipboardService
javax.jnlp.DownloadService
javax.jnlp.DownloadServiceListener
javax.jnlp.ExtendedService
javax.jnlp.ExtensionInstallerService
javax.jnlp.FileContents
javax.jnlp.FileOpenService
javax.jnlp.FileSaveService
javax.jnlp.JNLPRandomAccessFile
javax.jnlp.PersistenceService
javax.jnlp.PrintService
javax.jnlp.ServiceManager
javax.jnlp.ServiceManagerStub
javax.jnlp.SingleInstanceListener
javax.jnlp.SingleInstanceService
javax.jnlp.UnavailableServiceException

(they appear as links)

Click on one of the links and it gives you:

javaws.jar BEA WebLogic Platform
8.1 <install-dir>\jrockit81sp3_142_04\jre\javaws
javaws.jar J2EE 1.4 SDK and Sun Java System Application Server Platform
Edition 8 Update 1 <install-dir>\jdk\jre\javaws
javaws.jar J2SE JDK 5.0 <install-dir>\jre\lib
javaws.jar JBuilder 2005 Enterprise <install-dir>\jdk1.4\jre\javaws
jnlp.jar J2SE JDK 5.0 <install-dir>\sample\jnlp\servlet

a list of jar names and their associated projects.

 

[Print Guy]

If a centralized database could be set up in a suitable format, maybe
there could be an Eclipse plug-in that would react to not finding an
import by recommending a package to add. It could start by searching
local disks for the package, and if that fails, ask whether to download it.

Patricia

I did alot of grunt work to create a single file where you can search
for a class, then go back to find the jar then go back to find the
directory where the jar sits. Now mind you this is only for my PC, but
as long as you can find a jar file, you should be able to search your
harddrive for it...

The problem is, the file is 10meg large and is a bit to big to load
into one html document (although it does work). I've got to come up
with another way....I wonder if there is a way to create a database out
of it and query it that way.....

hmmmm.....

back to the drawing boad

 

[m_lavelle]

I agree, http://www.javasubscribedlinks.com is very good for this - its
free to subscribe and once signed up you can type a fully qualified
classname in Google (when logged into your Google account) and get
links to find jar files containing that class at the very top of your
search results.

You can also sign up by the "Java Subscribed Links" profile in the
Google co-op directory, at
http://www.google.com/coop/directory?cx=information