Re: Run etags over java source files packaged inside JARs

[Filipp Gunbin <fgunbin@fastmail.fm>]

On 12/03/2015 16:50 -0700, matthew.weaver@gmail.com wrote:

> In at least one large project, most of the 3rd-party libraries are
> distributed with their (java) source code bundled into jar files. It
> would be convenient if etags could index all that code in place,
> without having to store it uncompressed in the filesystem.
>
> Does etags, or any auxiliary utility, support this? Thanks.

Hi Matthew,

Seems that out-of-the-box, no.

It's rather uncommon to put sources in the same jars as byte-code: at
least it will unnecessarily increase the size of assemblies (like
war-s).

With Maven, sources are usually distributed in arhives besides jars, as
a separate type of the artifact.  IDEs usually process and use them.  I
think that javaimp package [1] could be extended to support browsing the
sources.  It obtains the classpath of the module via `mvn
dependency:build-classpath' command, then it could try the amended jar
filepath to find the sources.

However, I find it more convenient to just download the library sources
from git/whatever, build them to obtain javadocs and navigate both the
sources and docs manually.

But I'd like to hear what others think about that.

As for projects not using a dependency-management system, it'd be rather
boring to set the classpath manually, but it could be supported also
(but what is the general way of finding sources in this case? - a
separate path?)

Filipp

[1] http://elpa.gnu.org/packages/javaimp.html