It is almost a must to use mvn or any other build tool when dealing with java.
With mvn you can start a minimal simple all included java application and you run that too.. Just follow this. I will assume you are on linux or mac environment for this and also I am assuming you already have maven installed
Create a new folder and say mavenrocks
mkdir mavenrocks
Then add the following
mvn archetype:generate
What it does is, it will use a plugin to create a boilerplate application that holds basic src files along with standard directory structure.
if you do the listing on the created folder you will see:
. ./pom.xml ./src ./src/main ./src/main/java ./src/main/java/com ./src/main/java/com/gullele ./src/main/java/com/gullele/App.java ./src/test ./src/test/java ./src/test/java/com ./src/test/java/com/gullele ./src/test/java/com/gullele/AppTest.java ./target ./target/classes ./target/classes/com ./target/classes/com/gullele ./target/classes/com/gullele/App.class ./target/maven-status ./target/maven-status/maven-compiler-plugin ./target/maven-status/maven-compiler-plugin/compile ./target/maven-status/maven-compiler-plugin/compile/default-compile ./target/maven-status/maven-compiler-plugin/compile/default-compile/createdFiles.lst ./target/maven-status/maven-compiler-plugin/compile/default-compile/inputFiles.lst
and to run it
mvn execute:java -Dexec.mainClass="com.gullele.App"