Should you provide dependent libraries in client jar?

Question

We\'re providing a client jar for other internal apps to connect to our app\'s REST API. Our API depends on a few standard Jakarta libraries. Is it a best practice to include

Answer 1

The pros of bundling into a single jar are obviously:

• simplicity for the client

The cons of bundling are:

• inability to update the versions of the dependent libraries
• hiding necessary libraries can actually lead to potential conflicts in the client with those extra libraries
• complexity for you in the build process (but ways to do this pretty easily in Ant/Maven)
• some libraries with manifests cannot just be unjared and rejared - you need to actually merge the manifest information. There is Ant and Maven support for this though.

Another option is to use a single main jar (your code) with the class-path manifest attribute set to suck in the other jars. Personally I don't like this as it's really easy to miss these semi-hidden dependencies.

In the end, if you're talking just one or two jars, I'd leave them split out. If you're talking 10 or 15, you might want to consider bundling.