How to get MigLayout to work with my project?

Question

I'm trying to make a small GUI app and I want to use MigLayout with it. As Java newbie I don't know how to get MigLayout to work with my code and I'm running out of ideas.

My project source code is in ~/git/project/src/qdb/

The qdb is my java package name. I downloaded miglayout-3.7-swing.jar and miglayout-3.7.jar and placed them to my project sources and tried to compile the code but I get errors pointing to "new MigLayout()" stating "cannot find symbol".

I was in src dir and used "javac qdb/*.java" to compile (* gets expanded). I also tried to point classpath to my sources like: "javac -classpath /home/user/git/project/src/qdb/ qdb/*.java" but I still get the error.

Then I've also tried to put the jar files to ~/jars/ and use that as classpath but still the same error follows.

So, how to get MigLayout working?

Answer 1

Simply add the miglayout-3.7-swing.jar to your classpath:

javac -classpath /your/path/to/miglayout-3.7-swing.jar qdb/*.java

(as illustrating in this thread Installing Mig Layout)

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If you can compile them (with the above line),
but can not execute the resulting program, you also need to add to the java classpath the library

java -classpath /your/path/to/miglayout-3.7-swing.jar:/your/project/compiledClass/dir qdb.yourMainClass

Answer 2

If you are going to put it into a .jar file, you'll need to specify the Class-Path in the manifest file:

Class-Path: /your/path/to/miglayout.jar

Answer 3

VonC's answer is right. I just want to add (since you are a Java newbie) that you should consider developing using an IDE. They'll save you hours of by-hand-compiling, and will help you integrate your code with libraries (such as MigLayout) more easily.

There are two free IDEs I really like:

IBM's Eclipse.

SUN's (soon to be IBM's) Netbeans.

Also consider this SO thread. And this one too.

Good luck.