It can sometimes be useful to compare the contents of two JARs. In this blog post, I demonstrate a Groovy script that acts like a simple "diff" tool for comparing two JAR files.

The Groovy script shown here, jarDiff.groovy, can undoubtedly be improved upon, but does perform what I wanted it to. The script compare two provided JARs in the following ways:

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In several years of developing, reading, reviewing, and maintaining hundreds of thousands of lines of Java code, I have become accustomed to seeing certain "red flags" in Java code that often (but perhaps not always) imply problems with the code. I'm not talking about practices that are always wrong, but rather am talking about practices that might, in limited circumstances, be appropriate but generally are a sign of something wrong.

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Packt Publishing invited me to review the recently published Learning JavaScriptMVC by Wojciech Bednarski. I describe my impressions of this book on JavaScriptMVC in this post.

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This post very briefly summarizes some recent (within the past few weeks) developments in the world of Java.

Yet Another Java Versioning Scheme

Oracle has changed the Java version numbering schema again, this time in an effort "to avoid confusion caused by renumbering releases" because of the "recent increase of security releases" that have already led to skipped numbers and renumbered releases.

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One of the defining characteristics of the brave new world of Java is the increasing prevalence of the builder pattern in the Java space. Groovy, which appears to be the most popular alternative language (to Java) on the JVM, is well-known for its heavy use of the Builder in both the core libraries and in Groovy-supported libraries and frameworks.

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There have been numerous Java-related blog posts in recent days and I reference and summarize four of them here.

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In Java SE 7 Update 21 Release and more, Tori Wieldt pointed out that "Oracle has released three updates to Java" this past week: Java 6 Update 45, Java 7 Update 21, and Java SE Embe

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Since it's beginning, Javadoc output has been largely static HTML with navigation links and simple stylesheet styling of its appearance.

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There was a time when CORBA was all the rage and was as trendy and popular as any favored technology that has come along since. Although CORBA does not get the attention in blogs and other online media that it would have in those days or that other technologies get today, it still underlies several of the technologies that many of us use.

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In the Preface for Effective Unit Testing: A Guide for Java Developers, author Lasse Koskela states that although the impetus for Effective Unit Testing was to "write a Java edition of Roy Osherove's book, The Art of Testing with Examples in .NET," Effective Unit Testing ended up "having very little in common with Roy's book." Koskela further explains in the Preface that "this book is for the Java p

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There are many touted benefits of the Scala programming language, especially for Java developers. Among others, Scala's advertised strengths and advantages include the following:

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Anyone who has read any of my posts on NetBeans knows that there are numerous features of NetBeans that I really like. Recently, however, I found myself becoming increasingly irritated with a particular issue with a particular feature of NetBeans. It finally bothered me enough to motivate me to look into how to disable or alter that feature to my liking.

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Unfortunately, Java applications taking advantage of multiple threads can at times run into the dreaded deadlock condition. Fortunately, the Java Platform makes deadlock detection relatively easy.

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Since J2SE 5, Platform MBeans have been available that allow some key characteristics regarding the JVM to be monitored and (even managed in some cases) via JMX. In addition, many JVM-based applications add their own JMX-enabled features for monitoring and management.

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In my previous blog post, I looked at using JMX as one of multiple methods supported by GlassFish 3 for its administration, monitoring, and management.

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