JAR file creation

JAR files are for the most part ZIP files with the .jar extension. You can use nearly any compressor to create ZIP files; then you just rename them.

I believe some features like signing need to be done with a JAR utility but for JARs that only contain files ZIP should work fine.

There is a program that ships with most JRE's called jar.exe that can be used to do exactly what you want [smile]

the command line is a little obscure, and you need to write up a manifest iirc - but you should be able to find something out...

C:\j2sdk1.4.1_02\bin>jarUsage: jar {ctxu}[vfm0Mi] [jar-file] [manifest-file] [-C dir] files ...Options:    -c  create new archive    -t  list table of contents for archive    -x  extract named (or all) files from archive    -u  update existing archive    -v  generate verbose output on standard output    -f  specify archive file name    -m  include manifest information from specified manifest file    -0  store only; use no ZIP compression    -M  do not create a manifest file for the entries    -i  generate index information for the specified jar files    -C  change to the specified directory and include the following fileIf any file is a directory then it is processed recursively.The manifest file name and the archive file name needs to be specifiedin the same order the 'm' and 'f' flags are specified.Example 1: to archive two class files into an archive called classes.jar:       jar cvf classes.jar Foo.class Bar.classExample 2: use an existing manifest file 'mymanifest' and archive all the           files in the foo/ directory into 'classes.jar':       jar cvfm classes.jar mymanifest -C foo/ .

is what my version tells me.

iirc, I used jar -cfm *.class Manifest.mf Application.jar, but my memory's a little rusty...

hth
Jack

What Ive used to make a JAR outta a folder is this:

$ jar cf database.jar DataBase

where supossedly DataBase contains all the .class files (and yes, they deal with a database!!!)

Its that simple, cheers

Using Ant will make your life much easier. You can configure a task to create a JAR out of a specified directory.

To get you started:
Ant Tutorial
Ant Manual

Hope that helps.