Why some libraries are distributed with sources and javadoc jar files?

Question

I downloaded apache commons library. Unzipping the file, I found multiple other jar files other than the library that I need - commons-io-2.4.jar.

What are other files for? Are they just zipping source, tests and documents for reference? Or, are there other reasons to be included in distribution? If they are just zip files with jar extension, why are they distributed with jar extension?

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So you can step-debug through the code if necessary. See also [How can I debug external jar files](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3511398/how-can-i-debug-external-jar-files) — Richard JP Le Guen, Oct 31 '12 at 21:02

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 31 '12 at 21:06

maven can automatically generate and upload to a server those jar, with sources, javadoc, test, .... Maven generates them with .jar extension. Probably they were generated with maven.

In example, the command "mvn source:jar" generates de sources.jar. http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-source-plugin/

Why some libraries are distributed with sources and javadoc jar files?

1 Answers1