Question

I am writing a custom library. It’s build into a .jar archive. I am fully able to generate the javadoc, but I don’t know how I should distribute it?

1. Put it in the same .jar with the library
2. Put it in a different .jar
3. Some other way?

And how to include the javadoc in another project that uses my lib?

1. If I had put it in the same .jar, should I have written something in the manifest?
2. If it’s in a separate .jar, is including it in the project enough?

I am using NetBeans 9.1.

Answer 1

I’d include the library .jar and the documentation and other things, like a README, License file etc. in a single archive (zip or tar.gz)

mylib-1.0.1.tar.gz , which contains:

mylib-1.0.1/
           ├── javadoc
           │   └── index.html  (and all other javadoc files under here)
           ├── mylib-1.0.1.jar
           └── README

Instead of the expanded javadoc/ sub directory within the archive, you could add the compressed javadoc in a mylib-1.0.1-javadoc.jar (or zip) , both options are common.

mylib-1.0.1/
           ├── mylib-1.0.1-javadoc.jar
           ├── mylib-1.0.1.jar
           └── README