Setting the maximum size of a JDialog?

As discussed in Sizing a Scroll Pane, some components can provide useful information about setting the viewport’s preferred size. The setVisibleRowCount() method of JList is particularly convenient, but even getViewport().setPreferredSize(…) may suffice. Naturally, an sscce would help.

Addendum: As a concrete example, the dialog below is initially sized to have N-2 rows. As more are added, the dialog grows until the number reaches N. At that point the scrollbars start “growing”. The example uses a JList, but any Scrollable component should be adaptable.

import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.EventQueue;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import javax.swing.AbstractAction;
import javax.swing.DefaultListModel;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JDialog;
import javax.swing.JList;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.JScrollPane;

/** @see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5759131 */
public class ListDialog {

    private static final int N = 12;
    private JDialog dlg = new JDialog();
    private DefaultListModel model = new DefaultListModel();
    private JList list = new JList(model);
    private JScrollPane sp = new JScrollPane(list);
    private int count;

    public ListDialog() {
        JPanel panel = new JPanel();
        panel.add(new JButton(new AbstractAction("Add") {

            @Override
            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
                append();
                if (count <= N) {
                    list.setVisibleRowCount(count);
                    dlg.pack();
                }
            }
        }));
        for (int i = 0; i < N - 2; i++) {
            this.append();
        }
        list.setVisibleRowCount(N - 2);
        dlg.add(sp, BorderLayout.CENTER);
        dlg.add(panel, BorderLayout.SOUTH);
        dlg.pack();
        dlg.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
        dlg.setDefaultCloseOperation(JDialog.DISPOSE_ON_CLOSE);
        dlg.setVisible(true);
    }

    private void append() {
        model.addElement("String " + String.valueOf(++count));
        list.ensureIndexIsVisible(count - 1);
    }

    public static void main(String[] a_args) {
        EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable() {

            @Override
            public void run() {
                ListDialog pd = new ListDialog();
            }
        });
    }
}