How to add multiple jar files in classpath in linux

Question

Okay, I'm very new to linux and command line, and fairly new to java. I got an internship building a java program. I finally got it done on my machine (windows) and now I have to migrate it to a linux machine to test and then have it run as an executable. I have done much reading and researching on linux and understanding classpaths but it is still all very hard to fully comprehend. It's just not clicking for me yet. Can anyone explain the purpose of classpath in a simplified way using examples? One of the most confusing aspects to me is actually defining the physical path to the jar. Do I start all the way from usr or do I only need to begin from the jvm folder? If it matters, my java program is not located in the jvm folder. Can anyone shed some light for me?

EDIT: thank you guys very much for your help, I can't say that I'm fully in the clear but my understanding of my situation is a lot better.

Answer 1

Say you have multiple jar files a.jar,b.jar and c.jar. To add them to classpath while compiling you need to do

$javac -cp .:a.jar:b.jar:c.jar HelloWorld.java

To run do

$java -cp .:a.jar:b.jar:c.jar HelloWorld

Answer 2

You use the -classpath argument. You can use either a relative or absolute path. What that means is you can use a path relative to your current directory, OR you can use an absolute path that starts at the root /.

Example:

bash$ java -classpath path/to/jar/file MyMainClass

In this example the main function is located in MyMainClass and would be included somewhere in the jar file.

For compiling you need to use javac

Example:

bash$ javac -classpath path/to/jar/file MyMainClass.java

You can also specify the classpath via the environment variable, follow this example:

bash$ export CLASSPATH="path/to/jar/file:path/tojar/file2"
bash$ javac MyMainClass.java

For any normally complex java project you should look for the ant script named build.xml