[md-dev] can I add jar files to mxt file?

[John Richardson]

In my opinion, any charting package would be a win.  I happened to  
use JFreeChart, but perhaps JCharts would be just as good.  I went  
with JFreeChart because despite my extensive research on JChart (5  
minutes or so), I couldn't find a built in way to get mouse callbacks  
on graph artifacts or otherwise interact with the chart in JChart.   
My impression was JChart was a server-side/browser oriented package.

SwingX is really cool, but personally I'd wait for the stable 1.0  
release.  Otherwise unsuspecting extensions could get caught out in  
the cold when it changes again.  But perhaps you could give  
directions for how to get the jar fie into Moneydance's classpath so  
extensions developers could use it, but only at their own risk?

Would it help to load extensions in their own classloader?  Then they  
could include their own jars without worry of version compatibility.   
You'd be able to enforce security a bit this way too.  (On the other  
hand, that's a big hammer solution - maybe one that Moneydance needs  
at this point.)


On Aug 7, 2006, at 7:40 PM, Sean Reilly wrote:

> Hi John,
>
> Sorry for the delayed response.  The best solution is to include the
> jars in a fileset so that they are merged with your mxt.  There have
> been requests to allow external jar files to be loaded, but since all
> code and resources that are used by an extension must be signed, it
> would be a security risk to allow them to load separate jars.
>
> The most efficient solution would be for me to include any third
> party jar files with the next release of Moneydance so that they are
> available for any extensions.  The problem with that approach is that
> extensions that depend upon those jars won't run on current and
> earlier versions of Moneydance.  Let me know if there are any jar
> files you'd like me to include with the next version.  I was
> considering adding the jfreechart or JCharts jar files to the next
> release.  Are the SwingX packages stable enough warrant inclusion
> with the main Moneydance installation?  Anyone have any other
> requests for inclusions for future releases?
>
> Another issue is that the license for the third party jar files must
> be compatible with Moneydance, so GPL libraries can't be used but
> LGPL/BSD/MIT/etc should be OK.  I'm not sure of how the LGPL would
> apply when using the fileset-merge method above.
>
> Thanks,
> Sean
>
> On Aug 3, 2006, at 3:13 AM, John Richardson wrote:
>> The Moneydance developers page says that extensions should be self
>> contained.  If I use an external library for an extension
>> (JFreeChart, SwingX, etc...), is there a way to get these jars into
>> the extension other than including the external libraries' jars in
>> the fileset added to the mxt?
>
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