error: package org.apache.log4j does not exist while running code from cmd

Question

While running javac Main.java command I get a package org.apache.log4j does not exist error.

Main class

public class Main {

    private static Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(Main.class);

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        BasicConfigurator.configure();

        logger.info("in Main class");
    }
}

pom.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project
        xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
        xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>groupId</groupId>
    <artifactId>example</artifactId>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>log4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>log4j</artifactId>
            <version>1.2.17</version>
            <scope>compile</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</project>

log4j.properties

log4j.rootCategory=debug,console
log4j.logger.com.demo.package=debug,console
log4j.additivity.com.demo.package=false

log4j.appender.console=org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender
log4j.appender.console.target=System.out
log4j.appender.console.immediateFlush=true
log4j.appender.console.encoding=UTF-8

log4j.appender.console.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.console.layout.conversionPattern=%d [%t] %-5p %c - %m%n

Error message I get is:

Answer 1

Assumption 1 (wrong): no imports posted in the source class → imports have to be added

Looks that you're missing import statements in your Main class. Try this:

import org.apache.log4j.BasicConfigurator;
import org.apache.log4j.Logger;

public class Main {

    private static Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(Main.class);

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        BasicConfigurator.configure();

        logger.info("in Main class");
    }
} 

Real problem (after I fixed the image display in the post)

You're running the compilation not with maven buth with command-line javac . Without maven, you don't have dependencies automatically added to your classpath.

If you want to run from command line

In this case, you have to add log4j to your classpath. It will look like this (running from sources directory, which is <project_root>\\src\\main\\java in the default maven layout:

javac company/Main.java -cp %userprofile%\\.m2\\repository\\log4j\\log4j\\1.2.17\\log4j-1.2.17.jar

I assume that your local Maven repo is in default Windows path %userprofile%\\.m2 . If it is in some other part (or Linux), you have to change the path to your log4j-1.2.17.jar .

In this case, the class Main.class will be compiled into the same package where Main.class is.

If you want to compile with maven

Just run mvn compile from the directory where your pom.xml is. Note that maven will compile classes into the target directory, ie your compiled class will be in path like \\target\\classes\\company\\Main.class (relative to your project root, where your pom.xml is).