Started looking through the instructions here about writing XQuery modules for Java. Downloaded the latest stable eXist release to get the source, so I can link into it with Eclipse. Discovered that the instructions refer to org.exist.xpath, which isn't in the source; these functions seem to have moved to org.exist.xquery.

I started with the decision that my own packages ought to be properly hierarchical and named, so I created a new package called ca.uvic.hcmc.xqsearchutils, and moved the current search classes into it. Then I recompiled the jar file, and checked that I can still invoke the classes in the old way, based on Java binding. This means I have to use this line:

declare namespace su="java:ca.uvic.hcmc.xqsearchutils.SearchParser";

instead of the simple class name to invoke the class. That works fine on our test system.

Next, I tried linking in the eXist source to my Eclipse project. There are lots of errors and warnings when I do this, so linking to an external folder might not be the way to go. I'm going to try putting the source inside my existing Java library.