How to put .jars into separate folder?

[tmiranda]

Gents,

I'm looking at using a publicly available java class in a Sage plugin. The java class is not packaged nice and neat into a single jar file. Instead it contains several jar files as well as some .dll and .so libraries that must be in the same place as the jar files. Rather than dumping all of this stuff into the JARs directory I'd like to put it in it's own directory but if I do that how do I tell Sage where to find it?

I took a brief look at ClassLoaders but before spending too much time on this I'd appreciate some insight.

Thanks,

Tom

[GKusnick]

I would say just go ahead and put them in the JARs folder, since that's where Sage expects to find plugin JARs. Messing about with custom ClassLoaders is (in my opinion) something that should be done only as a last resort, and only by seasoned Java coders who know exactly what they're doing with it. (Jeff has posted elsewhere that an improperly written ClassLoader can mess up the plugin system.)

[tmiranda]

Greg,

That's probably good advice but there are about 20 different files that are needed. Stuffing that many items into somebody's JARs folder makes me feel dirty. I suppose that's the lesser of two evils because breaking the plugin system would not make me feel good either.

I'll have to think more about this.

Tom

[GKusnick]

What does this class do that requires that many files? Maybe there's another way to get the functions you need without so much baggage.

[tmiranda]

Yes, that's what I'm thinking too. I would like to access load information for the network and hard drives to see how hard it will be to implement a "Disk Monitor" and "Network Monitor" similar to my "CPU Monitor." That plugin has an amazing number of downloads so obviously there is a demand for it.

This Java class seems to be very popular and it's well supported:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/sigar/files/

Edit: One of my options is to not include the files that are not needed for Windows, Linux and Mac.

[PLUCKYHD]

Yeah I was the one who was using class loaders and seeing if classes where loaded in my plugin. I since have stopped and just leave the loading and unloading to sagetv.

Also be sure and seperate those Apis in library type so others can use them if they want and that is where they belong anyhow.