java: figuring out origin package of missing symbol

Question

I'm noticing that most Java web dev tutorials I come by are designed for people using an IDE and/or Maven instead of the Ant/text-editor combo that I use.

I've learned to determine where the POM.xml excerpts download the deps by using http://mvnrepository.com/ , but I'm still having a hard time determining the proper import statements when the tutorial omits them.

Sometimes, I've found that even if I find the docs, I may find that there's no obvious way to determine a symbol's package of origin . (try to find out which package @Produces belongs to) .

So, here's the scenario: you try to compile and you find out there's a missing symbol and you have no idea where that symbol is supposed to come from. What do you do? Other than chasing geese on Google all day, how do I determine the import statement when it's missing from the tutorial?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT:

I've figured out that I can construct an import statement by using the file hierarchy in the unzipped jar file ( for instance, jersey-multipart-1.19/com/sun/jersey/multipart becomes import com.sun.jersey.multipart.* ). But that still doesn't necessarily tell me how to go the other direction, eg to find out where @Produces is defined.

Answer 1

During development one can use the search index that comes with Maven Central to find the modules containing missing classes:

http://search.maven.org/

Better yet, deploy a local Maven repository manager like Nexus , Artifactory or Archiva . These would mirror Maven central's index and also index any local jars you might publish.

Finally I highly recommend integrating one of the dependency management plugins for ANT. Life is too short to be manually resolving nested java dependencies :-)

• Apache ivy
• ANT Aether