The classpath is the list of places that Java looks to find the bits of compiled code that it uses to run an application. When running TOPCAT this always has to include the TOPCAT classes themselves - this is part of the usual invocation and is described in Section 10. However, for certain things Java might need to find some other classes, in particular for:
If you are going to use these facilities you will need to start the
program with additional class path elements that point to the location
of the classes required. How you do this depends on how you
are invoking TOPCAT.
If you are using tht topcat startup script, you can write:
topcat -classpath other-paths ...
(this adds the given paths to the standard ones required for TOPCAT itself).
If you are invoking java directly, then you can either write on the
command line:
java -classpath path/to/topcat.jar:other-paths
uk.ac.starlink.topcat.Driver ...
or set the CLASSPATH environment variable something like this:
setenv CLASSPATH path/to/topcat.jar:other-paths
In any case, multiple (extra) paths should be separated by colons
in the other-paths string.
Note that if you are running TOPCAT
using java's -jar flag,
any attempt you make to specify the classpath will be ignored!
This is to do with Java's security model.
If you need to specify a classpath which includes more than the
TOPCAT classes themselves, you can't use java -jar
(use
java -classpath topcat-lite.jar:... uk.ac.starlink.topcat.Driver
instead).