Eclipse Plugin: Order of Native Libraries in the "Bundle-NativeCode" Section

Question

Recall the Bundle-NativeCode section in MAINFEST.MF:

Bundle-NativeCode: 
  lib/windows/x64/Library1.dll;
  lib/windows/x64/Library2.dll;
  ...
  osname=win32; processor=x86_64

In fact, I have around a hundred of libraries there. What I found out is that depending on the order they are specified, the plugin might fail to load with the following message:

!MESSAGE Missing native code match lib/windows/x64/Library1.dll; lib/windows/x64/Library2.dll; ...

At first, I thought that the reason might be the dependencies between native libraries themselves. In other words, I thought that maybe OSGi expects me to list these native libraries in the order of their dependency, i.e. the most independent ones first. After a few hours of that kind of sorting of a hundred of libraries according to their order, it again failed miserably, what proves that this is not the reason. I have one magical order which was found by chance, when it loads successfully, and it does not resemble any pattern, it is absolutely random order. If I start changing it, then the chance is high that it will fail again. For example, I want to sort them alphabetically, and this will not work.

Could anybody clarfiy what's going on. I've already wasted quite a lot of time on this issue and I'm very confused how on Earth can this happen at all and how to fix it.

Answer 1

The order does not matter. Since you have so many libraries. make sure you use ";" to separate them. Using "," will start a new clause that may cause an error if there are not matching attributes on the clause.