Run external jar inside another jar

Question

It is possible run a jar that I have inside another jar from my class?

I´m trying to run this command from my class

java -cp //file:/D:/Users/nb38tv/workspace/f2e-core/f2e-mock/f2e-test-framework/target/f2e-test-framework-1.8.3-SNAPSHOT.jar!/h2/sakila-h2-master/h2-1.3.161.jar -ifExists -tcp -web -tcpAllowOthers

But java complain since cannot find the jar.

If I remove the ! from the path I receive this error

Unrecognized option: -ifExists
Error: Could not create the Java Virtual Machine.
Error: A fatal exception has occurred. Program will exit.

Answer 1

It is not possible to execute a jar embedded in a jar like that, but even if it were possible, your Java command line is simply incorrect. That is because the -ifExists (and the other options) are interpreted as commandline options of the java executable.

You will get the same error message if you extract that h2-1.3.161.jar from the f2e-test-framework-1.8.3-SNAPSHOT.jar and tried to execute it with the same command line.

It would either need to use -jar instead of -cp , or you would need to specify the class to run before -ifExists .