Is a “master preferences” class a good idea?

Question

I have a class that manages user preferences for a large software project. Any class in the project that may need to set or retrieve a user preference from a persistent store i

Answer 1

I'm no Java Dev, but as far as the whole "octopus class" thing goes, can you not just supply an interface to the jar and connect the calls between the interface and the prefs manager at runtime, using the application configuration file to determine the prefs manager to instantiate?

Something like the .NET provider pattern?

That way you can decouple your jar from the prefs manager.