I use a lot of 3rd-party jars from places like Apache, JBoss, Google, etc. to provide functionality to my apps. A lot of the time I have boilerplate code that I use as a starting point in my projects, including references to 3rd party jars like log4j. Of course, then I need to add those jar files to my project to make the code work, but often time I can't remember which jar has the class I'm referencing (quick: which jar is javax.xml.ws.RespectBindingFeature in?).
I couldn't find any easy way of keeping track of all the jars I had scattered throughout the machine and it was really starting to bug me, so I created "The Shelf" as a repository for all the jars (a shelf hold jars, get it? Funny right? Okay, sorry, I'll leave humor to the professionals).
I also decided to take the opportunity to learn how to create an Eclipse plugin, which meant learning SWT/JFace, as well as using Derby for the first time.
DescriptionThe Shelf is an Eclipse plugin that provides both a preference page for adding jars, and a view for searching them. You add directories and individual jars in the preference page and search by class name in the view, which will return you the jar file that contains that class.
The Shelf uses an embedded Derby database to store the list of jars and their classes. If the database doesn't exist the first time you go to the preference page, it will be created.
Future IdeasThe initial version of The Shelf is pretty straightforward: it creates a database cache of jar file names and the classes they contain for searching. It might be nice to include some sort of network functionality to a central repository that will tell you what jar contains the class name, even if you don't have the jar registered in the database cache. An even slicker thing would be to actually go get the jar for you.
Other IDEsI use Eclipse for the most part, but from what I've used of NetBeans, it's also pretty slick. A port of this to NetBeans would be neat.
DownloadsI built a version of the code for anyone who wants to give it a try; it was built from the 6/2/09 version of the code in the trunk. Just drop it in $ECLIPSE_HOME/plugins and restart Eclipse.
Hey, Want to Help?If you'd like to help by adding features, fixing stuff, etc., please send an email to me (tachoknight@gmail.com) and I'll add you as a committer.
