title: Exporting an Eclipse plugin with a dependency on an external jar
body: <p>Just recently started using Eclipse and ran into an issue with exporting the plugin I'm working on. I tried to search but so far no luck - but if the answer is already here I'd be grateful if someone can point me to it.</p>
  
  <p>I'm writing a n OSGi/Equinox plugin with Eclipse. The plugin is for a 3rd party system, which allows extensions: basically all jars placed in the application's plugin folder are automatically loaded into the application at startup. I have managed to put together my plugin, it's loading fine and it works.
  The issue is that I rely on another plugin which is placed beside mine in the plugins folder. For obvious reasons I do not want to package that plugin into my plugin jar file. I have tried to add the dependency as an external archive, but this breaks the export: when I try to export my plugin project ant complains about missing dependencies and types. (If I actually include the other jar file in my plugin everything works, but obviously this is less then ideal.)</p>
  
  <p>So: how do I set up my plugin project dependency, that it's a) an external dependency and b) doesn't need to be specified with a path or a variable - i.e. how do I tell my exporter to "don't worry, it will be there right beside you"?</p>
  
  <p>Edit: Apparently there's an important detail I didn't mention. The external jar file I depend on is <strong>not</strong> an OSGi plugin, just a regular jar file with some classes in it. To the 3rd party system it seems all the same (all are under the plugins folder, all are loaded into the application), but for Eclipse the distinction seems important.</p>