[GEEK] Bootclasspath

In order to debug a hairy problem, I need to step into some Java system

classes (hashmap.java) HashMap.class is to be found in rt.jar, part of the
standard Java distribution (1.4.2_04) but it does NOT have debug info
compiled in.

So what to do? I think I did a pretty exhaustive set of steps but I was still stumped:

• I can't locate an rt.jar with debug info

• From what I read, you can't easily rebuild it from the java system sources because some stuff does not compile

• I tried recompiling hashmap.java with -g to get debug info and putting the resulting .class files into a .jar and placing that jar at what I believe is the front of the classpath. I did this in Eclipse by adding it as a library in the project properties, and then moving it "up" to the front. Didn't seem to do it.

• I tried taking the same built .jar file and putting into the jre spec in Eclipse, at the top, and that didn't do the trick either

I've posted to newsgroups and emailed friends and still have not found the problem.

Bootclasspath to the rescue? From reading around, I have a new angle. It would seem from the above article that in fact, java does not look for the system class jar (rt.jar) where you would expect it to. In fact it looks for it (on Windows) in c:Program FilesjavaJ2SDK1.4 etc. Secondly it looks like before any other class path is searched, the Bootclasspath picks up rt.jar and that is probably why my previous attempts at diagnosis have failed.

Java -X command lists some additional switches to the Sun Java VM, including -Xbootclasspath/p: which that allows you to pre-pend a directory or jar to the bootclasspath.