Do Java agents affect the JVM classpath?

Question

Do agents (-javaagent:agent.jar) affect the classpath of the JVM they are attached to?

Answer 1

Agent classes are loaded by the system class loader.

Agents may also append other JARs to bootstrap classpath or system classpath by calling Instrumentation.appendToBootstrapClassLoaderSearch or Instrumentation.appendToSystemClassLoaderSearch respectively.