Where can I find a Java deployment tool which, when given a particular class, will find all of the classes needed to be able to execute that class (and, build a .jar of all of those classes)?
Created May 8, 2012
Brian Sullivan DashO will do so when all the
classes are statically linked to one another, but reflection
usage gives problems to all such products. As an example,
think of asking the user for a String, and then doing a
Class.forName(userResponse) and invoking the first method;
it's absolutely impossible to predetermine which classes
would be required in such a case. Dash-O does allow the
classes the programmer knows are required for reflection
to be explicitly loaded into the project, though, which helps
with plugin style programming. It's worth the time to do
the deployment right. (I use Dash-O on a regular basis
for our deployments, though I build to directory, not to Jar;
I have custom scripts for building custom jars.)