How to add multiple jar files in classpath in linux

Say you have multiple jar files a.jar,b.jar and c.jar. To add them to classpath while compiling you need to do

$javac -cp .:a.jar:b.jar:c.jar HelloWorld.java

To run do

$java -cp .:a.jar:b.jar:c.jar HelloWorld

You use the -classpath argument. You can use either a relative or absolute path. What that means is you can use a path relative to your current directory, OR you can use an absolute path that starts at the root /.

Example:

bash$ java -classpath path/to/jar/file MyMainClass

In this example the main function is located in MyMainClass and would be included somewhere in the jar file.

For compiling you need to use javac

Example:

bash$ javac -classpath path/to/jar/file MyMainClass.java

You can also specify the classpath via the environment variable, follow this example:

bash$ export CLASSPATH="path/to/jar/file:path/tojar/file2"
bash$ javac MyMainClass.java

For any normally complex java project you should look for the ant script named build.xml