Including external jar-files in a new jar-file build with Ant

From your ant buildfile, I assume that what you want is to create a single JAR archive that will contain not only your application classes, but also the contents of other JARs required by your application.

However your build-jar file is just putting required JARs inside your own JAR; this will not work as explained here (see note).

Try to modify this:

<jar destfile="${jar.file}" 
    basedir="${build.dir}" 
    manifest="${manifest.file}">
    <fileset dir="${classes.dir}" includes="**/*.class" />
    <fileset dir="${lib.dir}" includes="**/*.jar" />
</jar>

to this:

<jar destfile="${jar.file}" 
    basedir="${build.dir}" 
    manifest="${manifest.file}">
    <fileset dir="${classes.dir}" includes="**/*.class" />
    <zipgroupfileset dir="${lib.dir}" includes="**/*.jar" />
</jar>

More flexible and powerful solutions are the JarJar or One-Jar projects. Have a look into those if the above does not satisfy your requirements.

With the helpful advice from people who have answered here I started digging into One-Jar. After some dead-ends (and some results that were exactly like my previous results I managed to get it working. For other peoples reference I'm listing the build.xml that worked for me.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<project basedir="." default="build" name="<INSERT_PROJECT_NAME_HERE>">
    <property environment="env"/>
    <property name="debuglevel" value="source,lines,vars"/>
    <property name="target" value="1.6"/>
    <property name="source" value="1.6"/>

    <property name="one-jar.dist.dir" value="../onejar"/>
    <import file="${one-jar.dist.dir}/one-jar-ant-task.xml" optional="true" />

    <property name="src.dir"          value="src"/>
    <property name="bin.dir"          value="bin"/>
    <property name="build.dir"        value="build"/>
    <property name="classes.dir"      value="${build.dir}/classes"/>
    <property name="jar.target.dir"   value="${build.dir}/jars"/>
    <property name="external.lib.dir" value="../jars"/>
    <property name="final.jar"        value="${bin.dir}/<INSERT_NAME_OF_FINAL_JAR_HERE>"/>

    <property name="main.class"       value="<INSERT_MAIN_CLASS_HERE>"/>

    <path id="project.classpath">
        <fileset dir="${external.lib.dir}">
            <include name="*.jar"/>
        </fileset>
    </path>

    <target name="init">
        <mkdir dir="${bin.dir}"/>
        <mkdir dir="${build.dir}"/>
        <mkdir dir="${classes.dir}"/>
        <mkdir dir="${jar.target.dir}"/>
        <copy includeemptydirs="false" todir="${classes.dir}">
            <fileset dir="${src.dir}">
                <exclude name="**/*.launch"/>
                <exclude name="**/*.java"/>
            </fileset>
        </copy>
    </target>

    <target name="clean">
        <delete dir="${build.dir}"/>
        <delete dir="${bin.dir}"/>
    </target>

    <target name="cleanall" depends="clean"/>

    <target name="build" depends="init">
        <echo message="${ant.project.name}: ${ant.file}"/>
        <javac debug="true" debuglevel="${debuglevel}" destdir="${classes.dir}" source="${source}" target="${target}">
            <src path="${src.dir}"/>
            <classpath refid="project.classpath"/>   
        </javac>
    </target>

    <target name="build-jar" depends="build">
        <delete file="${final.jar}" />
        <one-jar destfile="${final.jar}" onejarmainclass="${main.class}">
            <main>
                <fileset dir="${classes.dir}"/>
            </main>
            <lib>
                <fileset dir="${external.lib.dir}" />
            </lib>
        </one-jar>
    </target>
</project>

I hope someone else can benefit from this.

Cheesle is right. There's no way for the classloader to find the embedded jars. If you put enough debug commands on the command line you should be able to see the 'java' command failing to add the jars to a classpath

What you want to make is sometimes called an 'uberjar'. I found one-jar as a tool to help make them, but I haven't tried it. Sure there's many other approaches.