[Advanced-java] Class Loader Question

[Mike Curtis]

I think I must be misunderstanding something about the way the class 
loader works.

I have a (large) Java program that includes its own class loader, 
essentially to handle an unknown number of plugins, that just looks for 
jar files in a specific directory and reads their contents all in during 
initialization. This works fine for all my own code, and some external 
code but I have just started having a problem with an external jar that 
keeps coming up with Class not found errors; it is actually jmf.jar if 
that makes a difference the first time I call a Player. My class loader 
is definitely finding and reading the file. If I put in a 
Class.forName() specifying my own loader a few lines before the failing 
call then this works OK and finds the Class, but it still then says 
Class not found when I call anything and the stack trace shows that it 
is only looking in the system loader.

The program is run from a script (or on windows a small launcher) that 
just calls javaw specifying on the command line the classpath as just 
the one main system jar of my program and the main class that runs in 
that, which instantiates my class loader as the first thing it does.

Can anyone tell me how to force loading of these classes through my own 
loader which I know works OK on that jar because the Class.forName() works.

Thanks

regards
Mike

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