Broad Search

Index multiple jars by pattern across your entire local repository.

When to Use

The -Dclass= search finds one specific class. Sometimes you want to explore an entire library family — index all Jackson jars, all Commons libraries, or everything from a particular vendor. Broad search does that.

Usage

mvn jackknife:index -Dscope=repo -Dfilter="**jackson**"

[INFO] Searching /Users/you/.m2/repository with filter: **jackson**
[INFO]   com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-core:2.15.3
[INFO]   com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-databind:2.15.3
[INFO]   com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-annotations:2.15.3
[INFO]   com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype:jackson-datatype-jsr310:2.15.3
[INFO]   com.fasterxml.jackson.module:jackson-module-parameter-names:2.15.3
[INFO] Indexed 5 jars from repo

Both -Dscope=repo and -Dfilter= are required. The scope tells Jackknife to search the entire local repository instead of project dependencies, and the filter narrows which jars to index.

Glob Pattern Syntax

The filter is a glob pattern matched against each jar’s relative path within ~/.m2/repository.

Examples

# All Jackson jars
mvn jackknife:index -Dscope=repo -Dfilter="**jackson**"

# All Apache Commons libraries
mvn jackknife:index -Dscope=repo -Dfilter="org/apache/commons/**"

# All Swagger/OpenAPI jars
mvn jackknife:index -Dscope=repo -Dfilter="**swagger**"

# All Tomitribe jars
mvn jackknife:index -Dscope=repo -Dfilter="org/tomitribe/**"

# A specific group only
mvn jackknife:index -Dscope=repo -Dfilter="io/netty/**"

Latest Version Only

Like the class search, broad search groups jars by groupId:artifactId and keeps only the latest version of each artifact. If you have five versions of jackson-core in ~/.m2, only the newest gets indexed.

This keeps manifests clean and avoids polluting search results with outdated API surfaces.

After Indexing

Once jars are indexed, search them the same way you search project dependencies:

# Find a class across all indexed manifests
Grep "JsonParser" .jackknife/manifest/

# Decompile a class from an indexed jar
mvn jackknife:decompile -Dclass=com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonParser

The manifests accumulate — project dependency manifests and repo search manifests all live in .jackknife/manifest/ and are searchable together.