An interesting discovery of ant javac compile task

Question

hi all
i just found out a new thing about using ant to compile java classes, at least it is new to me. you can use ant to compile classes even if they are not in the correct physical path which are indicated in the package declaration. i.e. if you have a class :
package com.name1.name2
class SomeClass{
}and, if the java file is atually located in com/name1/name2/name3, the ant can still compile it and place the binary class anywhere u specify.
any comment on this?

Answer 1

thanks, i suppose javac will place the class file in
proper place with the information from the package
declaration. if it is declared for this package,
then it will be compiled and place in that folder
accordinglyYep. Relative to current directory, or to the directory specified by -d if present.
. interesting, i never knew that until
now. but this wuoldn't work if you want to use an IDE
tool to develop. i tried with eclipse, and it
complained about the package problem and treated it
as an error.That's probably eclipse being deliberately stricter than javac. Personally, I can't see any good reason not to put them in their respective package directories in the first place.