Please declare all dependencies required for the mod to launch in the mod manifest, nothing's more infuriating than a server that crashes randomly due to a missing dependency than directly at launch.

And no, CurseForge relations is not enough.

Hmm, so there is a way to do that. I wasn't familiar with this. Can you point me to an example of using a manifest.mf file?

Do I need a jar manifest for anything. Still learning Java.

For a mod you don't need a Jar Manifest, else it can be used to specify the main class of a Java executable usually.

ok, thanks for the pointer.

so this is not done with a manifest file but within the fabric.mod.json. I will add these as I update mods. Thanks for pointing that out.

so this is not done with a manifest file but within the fabric.mod.json. I will add these as I update mods. Thanks for pointing that out.

The fabric.mod.json file is the mod manifest.
Manifest.mf file is a JAR manifest.