better error reporting for missing .jar file

[Google Code Exporter]

Repro:

vogar missing.jar not-missing.java

Results:

"no actions Specified"

Expected:

'missing.jar' does not exist

Original issue reported on code.google.com by [e-mail] on 23 Apr 2010 at 9:45

[Google Code Exporter]

This is tricky because we allow you to pass arguments to the target process. 
For example, given a program 
Echo.java that prints its args,
   vogar Echo.java hello world
Vogar uses a heuristic to identify Echo.java as a file. When it sees arguments 
that aren't files, it assumes that 
they should be passed directly to the target process. So in this case, it's 
assuming missing.jar is a command 
line argument.

To detect errors sooner, perhaps we should require that target arguments never 
end with ".jar" or ".java" ?

Original comment by limpbizkit on 24 Apr 2010 at 5:04

[Google Code Exporter]

> To detect errors sooner, perhaps we should require that target arguments 
never end 
with ".jar" or ".java" ?

i'd rather it was the other way round, with how we tell vogar what to do being 
a bit 
more explicit. i often want to say "run these two benchmarks" or "run these 
three 
tests".

the jar files in particular feel like they should have some kind of --whatever-
classpath before them. i thought the current syntax was weird when it went in, 
but 
didn't have a concrete example to complain about.

GCC -- though it will try to guess what to do with a file based on extension -- 
does 
let you explicitly say. (just in case you feel the need to store your C++ in 
.java 
files and your Java in .f77 files.) something similar might be useful for us. 
i've 
certainly had cases where the heuristics were wrong. just because something 
matches 
*Test.java doesn't mean it's a junit test, and our behavior in that case isn't 
very 
clever.

Original comment by [e-mail] on 24 Apr 2010 at 6:52

[Google Code Exporter]

+1 to an explicit --classpath option for jar files

Original comment by [e-mail] on 26 Apr 2010 at 6:14