I need to package some third party libraries with my module. How do I do that?

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Generally if it’s a third party library (you didn’t write it, you can’t or don’t want to change it), you will want to use a wrapper module (see DevFaqWrapperModules). An NBM file (a module packaged for delivery over the net) can contain more than one JAR, so all your libraries can be included in a single file that packages your module.

Note you can multi-select JARs in the New Library Wrapper Module wizard.

Since NetBeans 6.8 you can add, remove and assign sources and Javadoc to wrapped libraries in Project Properties dialog, Libraries / Wrapped JARs tab.

Advanced stuff

Before NB 6.8 you could add libraries manually to a standard module; or add additional libraries to an existing library wrapper module. The relevant data is in the project.xml for the module. What you would do is add entries similar to this one for each JAR.

<class-path-extension>
    <runtime-relative-path>ext/hexedit.jar</runtime-relative-path>
    <binary-origin>release/modules/ext/hexedit.jar</binary-origin>
</class-path-extension>

Note if you want these libraries to be usable outside of the module they’re declared in, then you must add the relevant packages to the list of public packages for that module.

Applies to: NetBeans 6.8 and later

See also