Packing jar files into library jar files

Question

This question is not about packing a simple jar file (e.g. lwjgl) into a runnable jar file. I know how to do this using JarSplice. So if I have a game which uses JInput, I will pack my game jar and jinput.jar using JarSplice and enter the natives in the process. The problem arises when I want to create a custom library that uses JInput, and then pack that into my games. See, the whole idea of writing a game library is that I don't ever have to even copy code like the wrapper I wrote for JInput Controller, and I always have a definitive version inside a library jar. Basically what I want to do is create a jar file of my library, pack jinput.jar into it using JarSplice, possibly with the natives as well, and then when I want to export a jar of my game, I either export it automatically through Eclipse with the library jar, or, if that doesn't work, use JarSplice.

I've tried several solutions, and nothing works. When I try to pack the game jar and the library jar using JarSplice, I get an error saying that there's either duplicate .project or .classpath. When I try to export my game through Eclipse with the library jar, it won't run (which is to be expected), but then, if I try to attach the natives with JarSplice, it doesn't give me any errors but the jar doesn't run.

I'm not expecting anyone to solve this, but if anyone has an idea, something that will allow me to never look at the Gamepad code ever again, that would be awesome. I don't care if I have to package my library jar using JarSplice 5 times, and then do the same with the game jar, as long as it works. Otherwise I'll just have to copy the Gamepad class into every project alongside the library jar. :(

Edit: to clear things up, here's what I'm trying to do-
JInput has a class Controller, for controller input.
My_Library has a class Gamepad, which is a wrapper for JInput's Controller.
My_Game should be packed with My_Library so that it can access My_Library's different utilities, including Gamepad (for example, the class Player in My_Game has a field Gamepad for the player to pass gamepad input).
If I can't pack them all into one fat jar, I guess it's OK, as long as I'll be able to place Gamepad in My_Library and access it from My_Game.

Answer 1

Note that .jar files are simply .zip files with a different extension. You can freely view the contents and modify the archives with any zip program. Java also comes with a jar utility, which is a command-line program for creating, modifying and extracting .jar files. To make a .jar file executable, a manifest file is needed with main-class attribute. Learn to use these well. Don't be dependent on Eclipse creating your .jar files. Instead do it yourself from the command-line. Then make a script (either a shell script or Ant / Maven script), which does this for you. At least with Apache Ant manipulating .jar files is easy and combining multiple .jar files is simpler than from the command-line. Once you know how to work with .jar files well enough, you can offload the creation process to Eclipse or whatever tool you prefer, but only when you are the master and the tool is the slave.

One problem with executable .jar files is that the native binaries don't work inside them and must be present on the filesystem next to the .jar files. This is the point where you need JarSplice. It creates a wrapper class in the .jar file that first extracts the native files (e.g. lwjgl.dll) and then executes the original program. In addition it can create a native application such as .exe file for Windows. This means that JarSplice should be run only once and should be the last step when creating the distributable package. For intermediate libraries you should just combine the .jar files directly.