Question

I have a program that resides in a directory that is not set in the path/classpath – and I want to execute it using the -cp option on my console. But I get the NoClassDefFoundException, regardless of what I set as -cp

- out
 `- de
  `- my
   `- package
    `- MainClass.class

I navigate into the package directory and try to execute the main class using

MyBook-Pro:out flopes$ java -cp . de.my.package.MainClass

What am I doing wrong here?

Answer 1

The classpath must contain

• jar files
• directories containing the roots of the package tree.

If your package is de.my.package, the root is de, and the directory containing de must be in the classpath.

So, if you’re in the package directory, the classpath should be set to ../../..: the out directory is the one that should be in the classpath.

Or you should use . as the classpath, but launch your program from the out directory.