Failed to run a Java app with Git Bash

Question

I downloaded SymmetricDS, a tool for Database replication and tried to run it on my Windows7 machine. The program can be launched from command line and it works with Windows Terminal. However I always prefer Git Bash for command line stuff. When I run command sym though, I got error:

Error: Could not find or load main class org.jumpmind.symmetric.SymmetricLauncher

This tool is written in Java. I have JDK 1.8 installed. Git Bash inherits all environmental variables including $PATH and $JAVA_HOME from Windows. But why is it complaining about not finding the class?

The sym command is really running the following command:

exec "$SYM_JAVA" $SYM_OPTIONS -cp "$CLASSPATH" org.jumpmind.symmetric.SymmetricLauncher "$@"

All the jars are located in lib under the root directory of the application. The classpath is defined in a sym.service.conf inside conf directory:

# Java Classpath
wrapper.java.classpath.1=patches
wrapper.java.classpath.2=patches/*
wrapper.java.classpath.3=lib/*.jar
wrapper.java.classpath.4=web/WEB-INF/lib/*.jar

# Application main class and arguments
wrapper.app.parameter.1=org.jumpmind.symmetric.SymmetricLauncher 

I added echo $CLASSPATH right before the exec to print out the class path and it did seem to get all of them right:

/c/Users/dnj0109/Apps/symmetric-server-3.8.29/patches:
/c/Users/dnj0109/Apps/symmetric-server-3.8.29/patches/*:
/c/Users/dnj0109/Apps/symmetric-server-3.8.29/lib/*:
/c/Users/dnj0109/Apps/symmetric-server-3.8.29/web/WEB-INF/lib/*

Answer 1

That could be related to this thread:

On Windows, the path separator is a semicolon (';' instead of ':').
Don't ask why. Traditionally, the semicolon is interpreted by the Bash as the command separator, so you'll have to escape it:

$ java -cp lib/clojure-1.1.0.jar\;lib/clojure-contrib-1.1.0.jar

If you wonder why it works with PATH: MSys has special handling routines for that.