Where to put the packages

[pnelsonsr]

Just a concept that has eluded me... Anyone who can help make this understandable would be a God send.

in the directory c:/dev/myapp I have the subdir
src/com/mycompany/myapp/MyApp.java which consists of

package com.mycompany.myapp
 import com.mycompany.MyUtil
 public class MyApp {
   public static void main(String args[]) {
     new MyApp();
     MyUtil.Say();
   }
 }

src/com/mycompany/util/MyUtil.java which consists of

package com.mycompany.myutil
 public class MyUtil {
  public static void Say() {
    System.out.println("Hello");
  }
 }

If I go into the subdir src/com/mycompany/myapp and do a compile:
javac MyApp.java
It doesn't find MyUtil.

If i move the com/mycompany/util subdir into src/com/mycompany/
it does find it. It seems like a classpath issue, but I cannot seem to get my head around it.

My ant build seems to understand what is happening and runs things fine. Any enlightenment would be appreciated.

[pnelsonsr]

Spent a productive block of time with just the above code example and finagled it 2o different ways to Sunday, and I think I get it now. It's both classpath and package kind of deal. I think using Jars kind of obfuscated the knowledge for me and so when I tried doing things outside of the jar I was getting strange results.

[JamesCherrill]

Package names are interpreted starting from all the places in the classpath. Eg classpath begins with . (current dir), package is com.xxx.yyy - java looks for a dir com/xxx/yyy in the current dir. If it doesn't find that it does the same thing starting at the next location in the classpath etc.
Jars are treated exactly like directories.