In a recent blog post., I wrote about “Stripper”, an application that produces minimal and self-contained distributions of Java applications. I quickly found some issues with the Stripper code while preparing a subsequent blog-post, which I am happy to say I have fixed. The updated code may be downloaded from here. The source code can be downloaded from here.

This version of the Stripper removes an option from the previous version (the “i” option to include sub-classes of all included classes) and adds a new option, namely, a “p” option that accepts a comma-separated list of package-names from which all resources (class-files and non-class resources) are included in the output. The “i” option is not really necessary as far as I can see. The “p” option provides greater control on generating the output, accounting for third-party code that dynamically instantiates classes.

Here is a screen-shot of the new Stripper in action stripping the build-output of this project. Note that I choose to include all classes and resources from the following packages by specifying the “-p org.jdom,org.jaxen,org.saxpath,com.werken” option:

• com.werken
• org.jdom
• org.jaxen
• org.saxpath