Java Import Issues

Question

Hi,
I have a Java File which imports some five files and which in turn imports lot of other files.
When i compile this file, i get an error saying one particular file is missing. But the missing file is not a direct import. Now how do i find out which direct imported file is importing the missing file.
Actually i have some 100 files imported in my real scenario and which in turn is importing lot of files.
Now i need to figure out the exact import path. Is there a tool available to trace this out .
Any help on this is highly appreciated.
Thanks in Advance,
Lavanya

Answer 1

You've got a basic conceptual fault here:
You don't import "files" in Java. You import classes. And having an import statement for a class doesn't do anything special, it just provides a shorter name to reference a class by.
If for example you want a feeld of type com.acme.Foo you could either do this:
package com.acme.bar;
public class Bar {
  public com.acme.Foo myFoo;
}or this
package com.acme.bar;
import com.acme.Foo;
public class Bar {
  public Foo myFoo;
}Those two are completely identical, they produce the same class File (except for line numbers in debug info, maybe).
Second: to compile a class, Java needs to be able to load all classes referenced by it. Now if your class needs com.acme.Foo and com.acme.Foo can't be loaded, because some of it dependencies can't be loaded then compiling your class will fail as well.