META-INF case with fastjar and gij

Wed Mar 30 13:53:00 GMT 2005

I am using the pure Java source of GNU JAXP for a project I am 
working on. I have created service provider property files to specify 
the GNU implementations for org.xml.sax.driver etc. to add to the 
META-INF/services path of the JAR I make.
GNU fastjar takes the file system directory name META-INF and 
correctly creates the service provider directory in the JAR, but it 
also creates a default manifest file at meta-inf/manifest.mf.
When I run the JAXP application with gij, it seems to read meta-inf 
by default, ignore the META-INF path and cannot resolve a SAX driver 
to instantiate. If I suppress the default manifest with the fastjar M 
argument, no lowercase meta-inf path is created, the uppercase META-
INF path is processed and the SAX driver is loaded.
The Sun JAR specification [1] does not say META-INF must be 
uppercase, but all the examples are in upper case and broader reading 
suggests that uppercase path is expected. Should fastjar and gij be 
adjusted to use an uppercase default or are there good reasons they 
do not?
Best regards,
Phil
[1] http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/guide/jar/jar.html