I have recently come across of a scenario where we would have a empty manifest jar (i.e. jar with just META-INF/MANIFEST.MF having Class-Path attribute) referring to other jar file somewhere on file system. I believe this manifest jar has been created to act like a soft link to a specific version jar so that consumer need not deal with minor version changes of implementing jar.

```
manifest.jar:-
----META-INF/
--------MANIFEST.MF

Actual version specific implementation jar (test-1.1.jar):-
----META-INF/
--------MANIFEST.MF
----test/
--------Test1.class

```

Including manifest.jar in classpath in application does not load actual implementing jar and hence I see ClassNotFoundException.
Any idea why it does not load and how can I get this jar loaded as expected?

**Update**:  

I tried this with a sample executable jar and it (sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader) seems to load the class as expected. Referring just manifest.jar in Class-Path in-turn includes the actual implementing jar.  

Also, I found that we do have a legacy custom class loader for the project, not sure if that causing this weird behavior.

By default, shouldn't it take care of the referencing of other jars from manifest.jar?  

Is there a way to check whether this custom class loader is actually referencing jars mentioned in Class-Path?