The impact of including too many jar files in the classpath

Question

I have a large jar file that has many dependencies on other jar files ~ 40 files totaling several hundred MB. I am worried about dependency issues with this jar file, so I would like to add the necessary dependencies to the manifest file of this jar at compile time. I am wondering if there are negative drawbacks to this approach. I did some testing while loading classes, and in fact it didn’t have much effect.

Another reason I want to move the dependencies to the jar manifest is because with so many files, the command line becomes long and hard to read. We have many options -XX, etc., which are also passed to the JVM, but there seems to be no way to set them in the manifest or in some kind of configuration file.

Answer 1

If you depend on these cans, then everything is in order. 40 dependencies are not so many, in fact, so do not consider this problem. Just make sure you don't include unused dependencies.