femi lami wrote:... do I need to still make a jar file of the "jess.jar" file to be included in the project's jar file?
Yes, you will need to distribute "jess.jar" together with your own jar file. What Campbell was explaining is that you cannot include "jess.jar"
inside your own jar file with the standard JDK tools. (Java doesn't recognise jar files inside jar files). It has to be a separate jar, or you'd have to use a tool such as
One-JAR to pack it all into a single jar.
femi lami wrote:Also, my code makes use of ".clp" file in which the rules for the appliaction are stored. Do I need to include this file as part of the files needed to make the project's jar file.
I don't know, that depends on how Jess works. Look it up in the documentation of Jess.
femi lami wrote:Lastly, can ".java" file be inluded in the in the jar file or is it only their ".class" files that must be there?
You do not need to put the source code ".java" files in the jar, only the compiled ".class" files are necessary to be able to run the program.