Include jar with plugin

The most efficient way to work with the external libraries is to use Gradle/Maven and define the proper dependency.

In case, your dependency is provided as a .jar, which has to be delivered with your plugin - put it into some libs/ directory and specify it as a library: How to add local .jar file dependency to build.gradle file?

In case, such jar is optional for your plugin - so it's not a core feature and its size is significant, you can implement a mechanism that downloads it in the runtime. Such a problem was described also in the following issue asciidoctor-intellij-plugin / Move extra functionality to separate download.

Thanks for the reply.

Will dependencies added to /libs be included in the distribution .zip ?

Yes, they'll be added to the libs directory in your .zip archive.

Thanks again, and final follow up question.

Inside a RunnableState, how would I get those libs onto the classpath? Would something like this seem correct:

override fun configureRTClasspath(javaParameters: JavaParameters, module: Module?) {
  javaParameters.classPath.addFirst(PathUtil.getJarPathForClass(Class.forName("com.myclass.Class")))
}

Jars will be added to your zip archive only in case it is already referred in your Gradle configuration file as a dependency. With that, it already should be available in your classpath.

Sorry, I don't think I was very clear in my original question. The dependency is not for the plugin itself, but the plugin launches a process and this dependency needs be on the classpath of the launched process.

I've added the dependency to gradle here: https://github.com/kotest/kotest-intellij-plugin/blob/master/build.gradle#L34

And then when I launch the process I add that dependency to the runtime classspath here:

https://github.com/kotest/kotest-intellij-plugin/blob/master/src/main/kotlin/io/kotest/plugin/intellij/KotestRunnableState.kt#L46-L48

It works, I just wanted to check that this is the right way to do it.

Ah, sorry I didn't catch it.

Regarding your question - yes, that way of adding the dependencies is correct.

Great thank you. I appreciate the responses.

Hi all, sorry for postpone question but your link now has 404 status. I am right understood that your use gradle dependency scope as - runtimeOnly(fileTree("libs") { include("*.jar") }) ?