> Also the accepted answer on 100+ different websites for how to choose single jars from a folder at runtime Which goes to show that not all information source

> Also the accepted answer on 100+ different websites for how to choose single jars from a folder at runtime Which goes to show that not all information sources are equally good. For a couple of decades, we've said over and over -- and still do -- that depending on unspecified behaviour is technical debt that will eventually break your codebase. > with no easy replacement or even explanation of how to replace it That's how online givers of bad advice roll -- they advise you do something they know is wrong, and when things go south they don't help you; those who followed Sun/Oracle's advice ran into no such issues. There are documented and supported ways to get the classpath. (I won't lie, I used that easy trick, too, once or twice, but I did it knowing full well that it might well stop working some day, and treated it as technical debt.)