Open Source Build Systems in Java

Autojar helps creating jar files of minimal size from different inputs like own classes, external archives etc. It starts from one or more given classes (e.g., an applet), recursively searches the bytecode for references to other classes, extracts these classes from the input archives, and copies them to the output. The resulting archive will only contain the classes that are really needed. Thus one can keep size and loading time of applets low or make applications independent of installed libraries. In a similar way, autojar can search directories and archives for other resources (like image files), extract them and copy them to the output. Although autojar can't know exactly which classes get loaded dynamically, it can search the bytecode for invocations of Class.forName() and warn about it. In some cases (constant class name), it can even find out which classes are to be loaded, and add them automatically to the output.