setting classpath for slf4j for java compiling

Question

I am having a problem setting up the classpath for slf4j for compiling java files. I tried two ways: 1. provide the classpath in command line

javac -cp /Users/page/.m2/repository/org/slf4j/slf4j-log4j12/1.7.5/slf4j-log4j12-1.7.5.jar src/main/java/com/scg/domain/*.java src/main/java/com/scg/util/*.java

This gave the following error:

src/main/java/com/scg/util/ListFactory.java:8: error: package org.slf4j does not exist
import org.slf4j.Logger;
                ^
src/main/java/com/scg/util/ListFactory.java:9: error: package org.slf4j does not exist
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;
...../long error message

1. I tried to export the CLASSPATH to my env variable.

export CLASSPATH=/Users/page/.m2/repository/org/slf4j/slf4j-log4j12/1.7.5/slf4j-log4j12-1.7.5.jar

This did not help either and resulted in same error, when I tried

javac src/main/java/com/scg/domain/*.java src/main/java/com/scg/util/*.java

I am trying to compile all the java files in two packages. but I need to have slf4j in my classpath. but somehow I am not able to get it work. Thanks

Solution

This dependency is the api:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
    <artifactId>slf4j-api</artifactId>
    <version>1.7.5</version>
</dependency>

You need the slf4j-api.jar in your classpath for compiling, not the slf4j-log4j12.jar.

It worked in maven because the binding-lib (slf4j-log4j12) has a dependency on the api and thus maven loads that as well, without you explicitly defining it as a dependency.