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I have a Java project that I'm working on in Eclipse. I have all my code in a src. Eclipse automatically compiles my .java files and stores the .class files in a directory called tmp.

Earlier, I was suing Ant to run my project. My ant script would would compile my Java code, and Jar all the .class files into a .jar and store it into a jar directory. In this jar directory I have some other files e.g. settings.cfg and data.lst. My application needs these files to run but they should not be included in the Jar. They will be deployed along with my JAR and should reside in the same directory. Currently while developing, I have modified and customised my settings and properties files to contain additional information. I don't want these files replaced every time I have a new build as I would like the data to persist across builds. I'm just looking to get the built JAR into the jar directory and execute that. The rest of the files stay the same.

How can I configure my Eclipse so that it always compiles my code, JARs it to the jar directory and executes that JAR. That way, my "extra files" are always in the same place as the JAR.

I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out how to accomplish this.

Mridang Agarwalla
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    Why aren't you using your earlier ant script in your Eclipse project? Eclipse can use the same ant script to build the project. – Garbage Sep 18 '12 at 10:13
  • I tried that. Now it calls the part of my Ant task called `build` that builds the JAR. This step compiles all the .java files into .class files in the `tmp` directory and creates a JAR from those files into the `jar` directory. I also have another step in my Ant file that executes the JAR after building it from the previous step. If I modify my Eclipse build configuration to call the `execute` task of my Ant, Ant would run it but would eclipse still be able to do things like hooking up the debugger, etc. since the JAR was not executed by Eclipse but by Ant? – Mridang Agarwalla Sep 18 '12 at 10:38
  • @Garbage, I tried that but now it seems that Ant is executing the application and not Eclipse. – Mridang Agarwalla Sep 18 '12 at 15:56

3 Answers3

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If you need this feature for fast running/debuging, create new Run Configuration and in the Arguments tab, Working Directory specify the "jar" directory.

gslavov
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The answer was found on another SO post. It was about creating a new "Run Configuration", removing the default classpath entries and adding a the folder containing the JAR i.e. the jar directory and also the JAR file itself.

Here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1732316/304151

I also had to modify the build configuration a bit. For automatic builds, it used the Java Builder to compile all the .java files into .class files and store it in the tmp directory. I used a custom Ant task to package all the .class files from the tmp directory into a JAR and store it in the jar directory. This is the file that Eclipse executes.

Community
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Mridang Agarwalla
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In your project, right click Properties, in "Java build path" menu you can set "default output directory" in the Source tab and make it point to jar directory:

yodamad
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