Aside from these, many modern Java IDEs like IntelliJ or Eclipse feature built-in compilation automation packages that help built project files in the background. These stand-alone tools provide an array of automated workflow support including compilation automation. Build Tool Optionsīeing that Java is a mature, enterprise-grade, well-supported programming language-there’s plenty of automated build tools that can help with compilation.

However, the major drawback here is that the sources.txt file needs to be regenerated every time a new source file is created or renamed. The benefits of this method of compiling multiple files with javac are that it has no dependencies and is super fast. Javac this command, the project structure will look like the following: └── ExampleProject/ In this case, multiple source files will be read in. If the source file contains a class or interface that is. src/ClassThree.java Step 2: Compile Source FilesĪfter the sources.txt file has been generated one need only rely on the default functionality of the javac compiler, by specifying that command-line arguments be read from a file. The Java compiler, javac, requires that the name of a Java source file end with a. This command results in the creation of a new sources.txt file in our ExampleProject directory which contains the following information. On linux/Unix machine, the following command (issued from the ExampleProject directory) will search for all java source files and save them into a file names sources.txt: This functionality opens the door for all kinds of possibilities but for the context of this article, we’ll be using it to load all source files for compilation. Javac accepts an argument for a file containing all command-line arguments. └── ClassThree.java Step 1: Create a List of All Source Files To illustrate how to compile multiple files in a Java project using only the command prompt, javac, and the file command (unix/linux), we’ll be working with the following example project directory structure. 2 Step 1: Create a List of All Source Files.

Compiling java files