Since I have many separate classes for my program I created 2 folders (I’m using JDeveloper) in my project called “panels” and “buttons” where I’ve placed the corresponding classes that extend JPanel or JButton. I’ve used the same package for all my classes so that those that are placed in a folder can be referenced by the rest of the classes that are not placed in the same folder without importing (all my classes belong to the same package, e.g. mypackage).
My question is should I change this and make the classes of a directory belong to a separate package (e.g. classes in “panels” directory to belong to the mypackage.panels package and classes in “buttons” dir to belong to mypackage.buttons)? The first way works fine and has the benefit of lacking the need to import but I was wondering if this is the “correct” way to do this…
Yes, in general I’d strongly encourage you to make your directory structure match your package structure. Some IDEs will enforce this, and other developers are likely to expect it – it’s useful to know exactly where to find a particular file.
Now whether you really want separate packages for these controls is a different question, and one we can’t answer.