Currently, the rmic compiler is invoked from the command line via the
rmic.c command line wrapper.

If you say

rmic -classpath $CLASSPATH -iiop HelloImpl

the $CLASSPATH isn't actually passed to the VM, it's only passed to the compiler.

If it were also passed to the VM, we wouldn't have to duplicate code to merely load classes from the classpath, as in sun/rmi/rmic/iiop/ClassPathLoader.

Warning: J2EE still likes to invoke the rmic compiler directly by referencing sun.rmi.rmic.Main. If we remove our own ClassPathLoader completely, then their environment needs to make sure that its classpath setting has access to everything it needs. If this is not possible, then perhaps we do have to duplicate classloading.