JARPATH
The concept of the CLASSPATH has been with us since the beginning. The concept of the Jar file has also been with us for some time now, although I still remember the time when it was introduced in JDK 1.1.
I've always felt that there is something wrong with both concepts, but couldn't pin it down.
Today I had an A-ha moment: The way Java's going about putting classes into a CLASSPATH is just silly. We should be using something like a JARPATH, not CLASSPATH.
The Java class file is no longer the unit of distribution of modern Java systems. We deliver our systems as a set of Jar files. Yet we insist on maintaining a CLASSPATH.
This is the wrong level of granularity.
We sort of already have a solution for this problem in the context of web apps with its WEB-INF/lib directory. We also can use the JRE extension mechanism whereby you can put a jar file into the $JRE_HOME/lib/ext.
But can't we persuade Sun to introduce a JARPATH environment variable? So that instead of doing:
export CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH:/opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/concurrent.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/getopt.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/gnu-regexp.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jacorb.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jbossall-client.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jboss-client.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jboss-common-client.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jbosscx-client.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jbossha-client.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jboss-iiop-client.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jboss-j2ee.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jboss-jaas.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jbossjmx-ant.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jboss-jsr77-client.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jbossmq-client.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jboss-net-client.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jbosssx-client.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jboss-system-client.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jboss-transaction-client.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jcert.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jmx-connector-client-factory.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jmx-ejb-connector-client.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jmx-invoker-adaptor-client.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jmx-rmi-connector-client.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jnet.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jnp-client.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/jsse.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/log4j.jar:\ /opt/jboss-3.2.3/client/xdoclet-module-jboss-net.jar
I can simply do:
export JARPATH=$JARPATH:/opt/jboss-3.2.3/client