What is the advantage of the 'src/main/java'' convention?

Question

I\'ve noticed that a lot of projects have the following structure:

• Project-A
  • bin
  • lib
  • src
    • main
      • java
        • Ro

Answer 1

Yes, this is a maven convention, but even if you're not using maven, there are benefits to using it:

1. people new to the project will have an easier time coming up to speed, since it's a "standard"
2. this convention is flexible and has a place for non-Java code and other things you don't have at this point. This is one reason it's popular and you may find it evolves better than a scheme you come up with on your own
3. if you want to move to maven at some point it will be easy

Although I wouldn't argue you should switch just to switch, when starting a new project there's really no reason to not use it-- unless you disagree philosophically with how it breaks the code up.