Question

I m doing an eclipse plugin project to create an IDE. I need to create a jar file for the plugin project in which i have four plugin packages which was created by me. Now I need these to be created as a single jar file and the user should be able to download the jar file and run my plugin project without the eclipse software.

Answer 1

EDIT-
You cannot run Eclipse plugin outside of Eclipse, because you need the Equinox runtime container. you could run a plugin using the eclipse executable, and as an application, see:

http://wiki.eclipse.org/FAQ_How_do_I_create_an_application%3F

You’re effectively creating an an org.eclipse.core.runtime.applications extension point.

You could also publish a plugin as part of an Eclipse application and then export it as an executable so that it can be run aside from Eclipse. This still bundles the Equinox runtime and plugin together though.

Also, check out “Running it outside of Eclipse” section here.

-END of EDIT

Generally, all you need to run an executable jar file is the jvm (java) and your code with all the classpath dependencies. You can use “Runnable Jar Export Wizard” available in Eclipse IDE when you right-click your project.

You can put all the dependencies inside your jar (for example you can create a lib directory in your project and put all your dependency jars inside). Also you will need to specify the dependecy location in the MANIFEST file that will be generated for your executable jar (if you use the wizard the MANIFEST file will contain your dependencies).

To run your executable jar you will need to execute:

java -jar jar-file

Good Luck!