Dependent JAR and Source JAR ?

[Arnold Strong]

What is a dependent JAR and what is a source JAR ? Why are they needed ?
I saw it in the sentence:

Dependent jars can be found in the libs folder and the corresonding source jars can be found in the libs-sources folder.

[William P O'Sullivan]

A dependent jar is something your application needs to work, e.g: log4j.jar, db2java.zip, spring-core.jar

Source jar is your application packaged as a jar.

WP

[Junilu Lacar]

William P O'Sullivan wrote:Source jar is your application packaged as a jar.

WP

You probably meant "your application source code packaged as a jar"

[Arnold Strong]

Why would someone want to package their source code as a JAR ???

[Junilu Lacar]

Arnold Strong wrote:Why would someone want to package their source code as a JAR ???

To distribute, along with the executable. IDEs like Eclipse can use the source jar during debugging, if it is available. A JAR is simply a ZIP with specific folder/file structure.

[James Boswell]

A source jar is the source code for any application, not just your own. As already pointed out, you may need this to attach the source to your IDE for debugging purposes. Most jars stored in the Central Maven repository also have a source jar which you can automatically download within eclipse.

[Paul Clapham]

Arnold Strong,
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