I came across a funny error today while I was working with a plug-in fragment in Eclipse. I had a fragment that contained several resources for use in a host plug-in. All of a sudden, my host plugin was no longer able to find the resources from the fragment. I couldn't figure out why. Then I stumbled across some information about MANIFEST.MF files in Java jar collections. Apparently, there is a limit to the length that a line can be in a MANIFEST.MF file. If a line is more than 72 characters long, then it must be broken into more than one line. You can do so by breaking it on the 72nd character and continuing the next line with a space. My MANIFEST.MF file had one such line. So, changing the line from (imagine that there is no word wrap):
Eclipse-Variable-Example: Here is my really long manifest line that is more than 72 characters
To:
Eclipse-Variable-Example: Here is my really long manifest
line that is more than 72 characters
Made it work. I knew that you
could break lines, but I didn't know that you
had to break them. Now I know.
But this leaves me questioning: the standard says that you should break the line on the 72nd character. Does that mean that my example should have really looked like this:
Eclipse-Variable-Example: Here is my really long manifest line that is m
ore than 72 characters
? That just seems like a weird way of doing it.
You would have known this if you attended my OSGi talk last week :P. Actually, I thought the line limit was 80, so there, I learned something too. :)
ReplyDeleteSorry, Ian. After you had told me, I realized that I had previous arrangements to be at my aunt's house. Next time.
ReplyDelete