How do I run a java program from a different directory?

Question

I have a java program that I would like to be able to run from anywhere on my machine. I would like to run it from my Cygwin command prompt. I've made scripts to call the java program. I added the location of the java program to the classpath, and the scripts work when I run them from the java program's directory. However, when I try to run from any other directory, I get:

java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: commandprogram/CommandProgram

This is my script:

#!/bin/sh
CWD=`dirname "$0"`
java -cp "$CWD/classes;$CWD/lib/AJarFile.jar" commandprogram/CommandProgram

Changing the java line to the following:

java -cp "$CWD/classes;$CWD/classes/commandprogram;$CWD/lib/AJarFile.jar" CommandProgram

produces the same results.

Answer 1

add your directory to classpath example:

java -classpath commandprogram CommandProgram

or

java -classpath directory_to_program Program

Answer 2

you have to use a dot to separate packages, not a slash.

java -cp "$CWD/classes;$CWD/lib/AJarFile.jar" commandprogram.CommandProgram

Answer 3

After trying just about everything I could think of, I echoed out the command and saw that there was mixing of Cygwin paths and Windows paths. The solution was to change the script to:

#!/bin/sh
CWD=`dirname "$0"`
CWD=`cygpath -w "$CWD"`
java -cp "$CWD/classes;$CWD/lib/AJarFile.jar" commandprogram/CommandProgram

Then CWD changed to "C:\Program Files\..." instead of "/cygdrive/c/Program\ Files/..."

I had previously encountered this problem and solved it with the cygpath -w solution, but then changed my script slightly and didn't notice that the path problem came back.