Java: Dynamically Load Multiple Versions of Same Class

Question

What I\'d like to be able to do is to load set of classes, probably all in the same folder. All of which implement the same interface and are the same class, then in my code

Answer 1

The only framework I know which does support what you are after is OSGI:

Its network model, described in this article "Exposing the boot classpath in OSGi", does allow that

One of the side effects (or aims) of the networking model is type isolation or class versioning: multiple version of the same class can coexist nicely inside the same VM since each one is loaded into its own network, its own space.

See this tutorial for beginning and choose on eof the OSGI Framework (like Equinox, Knoplerfish or Apache Felix)