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As far as I can tell, the only way to set the main class for a jar is to type the magic phrase into the manifest. I think this is a common enough manifest entry that there should be some more UI infrastucture support. Maybe the main class could be set using a property of the jar contents object. Other interesting design ideas could potentially be generated by a quick and dirty hallway usability study :).
This makes more sense as part of a general manifest editor improvement than as a one-off. As the definition of class jar.utils.manifest.Manifest shows, a manifest is really: A set of properties applying to the entire jar file, plus A set of per-jar-file-entry sections, each of which consists of another set of properties And the rules for parsing text into this structure are not obvious, in particular the rules for white space handling. Creating an editor which reflects this structure would make entering a manifest by hand far less error-prone. Allowing shortcuts for common entries (e.g. the main class and classpath for an executable jar) would be easy ehancements.
For example, ability to set Versioning Specification attributes easily (package version, title, vendor, etc.). If you have not done so already, try using the apisupport's support for module manifests, which implements a simple domain-specific manifest editing facility with two-way editing. Far from perfect but could help form a prototype.
Target milestone 3.3
Target milestone -> 3.3.1.
Set target milestone to TBD
With new J2SE project type, just type in the main class in the project customizer.