eclipse-plugin-embedded-jars

name	eclipse-plugin-embedded-jars
description	Embeds Maven dependencies into Eclipse plugin bundles. Use when adding third-party JARs not provided by the Eclipse target platform.

Eclipse Plugin Embedded JARs

Eclipse plugins do not load Maven dependencies automatically. If a library is not provided by the target platform, copy its runtime JARs into the plugin lib/ folder and list them in the PDE/OSGi metadata.

Workflow

- [ ] 1. Add the Maven dependency to the module that uses it.
- [ ] 2. Run mvn dependency:tree -Dscope=runtime in that module.
- [ ] 3. Identify direct and transitive runtime JARs not provided by the target platform.
- [ ] 4. In the plugin pom.xml, add their groupIds to maven-dependency-plugin <includeGroupIds> so copy-dependencies copies them into lib/.
- [ ] 5. Run mvn clean install from the root or plugin project.
- [ ] 6. Add each copied lib/<artifactId>.jar to META-INF/MANIFEST.MF Bundle-ClassPath.
- [ ] 7. Add each copied lib/<artifactId>.jar to build.properties bin.includes.
- [ ] 8. Refresh/reimport the plugin project or add each lib/<artifactId>.jar to .classpath for Eclipse compilation.

Rules

• Target platform first: Do not embed JARs already supplied by the Eclipse target platform; use OSGi dependencies for those.
• Transitives: Missing runtime transitive JARs cause ClassNotFoundException even if compilation succeeds.
• MANIFEST.MF: Bundle-ClassPath is the runtime classpath for embedded JARs.
• build.properties: bin.includes controls what is packaged into the plugin artifact.
• .classpath: Development-time only; it does not affect plugin runtime or packaging.
• plugin.xml: Do not edit for classpath/JAR embedding; it is for Eclipse extensions.
• stripVersion: This project copies JARs without versions, e.g. langchain4j.jar.
• Removal: Remove the dependency, copied JAR, includeGroupIds, Bundle-ClassPath, bin.includes, and .classpath entries.

Files

File	Purpose
dependency module pom.xml	Declares what code uses
plugin pom.xml	Copies selected runtime JARs into lib/
plugin META-INF/MANIFEST.MF	OSGi runtime classpath
plugin build.properties	PDE packaging
plugin .classpath	Eclipse compiler visibility