Java development under Debian

[glhenni@cs.sandia.gov (Gary L. Hennigan)]

I'm doing some Java development and I'd like to use my Debian box as
one of the development platforms. Trouble is that I need the swing and
infobus libraries for this project and they're not included with the
Debian JDK. I can download these puppies from Sun but how do I install
them so that I don't have to explicitly list the jar files in a
classpath, and not violate the convention of installing software in
anything but /usr/local or /opt?

If anyone has a good solution for this I'd be interested in hearing
it.

Thanks,
Gary