problem compiling project, classpath in xml ".classpath"
"<classpathentry...>"

i'm trying to compile a project, it has about 70 jar files. Though it
may not use all 70.

I want to compile it from the command line.  Though I think it was
intended to be compiled from some IDE.

Various parent directories have  ".classpath" files

with contents in xml, such as

<classpath>.........
<classpathentry .................>

There are a few of these files one in each of a number of parent
directories.

I'd like to know what these xml files are written for. It's a layer
over java so it must produce a classpath which it passes to the JVM.

One option I have is to make a jar file that references all 70 jar
files in its manifest under Class-Path.  Then when compiling the
program I just reference that one jar file.  I've never done anything
like it but It's something i will try. But really i'd like to only use
the jar files that are used.  And there may be clashes if I load all
the jars as I would there. Since most of the jars contain packages
with largely the same paths.

I'd like to know what would be parsing these .classpath files. It
looks like it may be some standard thing. I'd like to know if I can
and I should be able to,  turn them into a classpath. Figure out all
the jar files being used.  I suppose I could somehow write something
to parse them. But I think there must be a program that reads those
files otherwise how would it run the JVM. I'm hoping it's a standard
program/tool that does it.