Provides interfaces for tools which can be invoked from a program,
for example, compilers.
These interfaces and classes are required as part of the
Java™ Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE),
but there is no requirement to provide any tools implementing them.
Unless explicitly allowed, all methods in this package might
throw a NullPointerException if given a
null
argument or if given a
list or collection containing
null
elements. Similarly, no method may return
null
unless explicitly allowed.
This package is the home of the Java programming language compiler framework. This
framework allows clients of the framework to locate and run
compilers from programs. The framework also provides Service
Provider Interfaces (SPI) for structured access to diagnostics
(DiagnosticListener) as well as a file
abstraction for overriding file access (JavaFileManager and JavaFileObject). See JavaCompiler for more details on using the SPI.
There is no requirement for a compiler at runtime. However, if
a default compiler is provided, it can be located using the
ToolProvider, for example:
JavaCompiler compiler = ToolProvider.getSystemJavaCompiler();
It is possible to provide alternative compilers or tools
through the service provider
mechanism.
For example, if com.vendor.VendorJavaCompiler
is a
provider of the JavaCompiler
tool then its jar file
would contain the file META-INF/services/javax.tools.JavaCompiler
. This file would
contain the single line:
com.vendor.VendorJavaCompiler
If the jar file is on the class path, VendorJavaCompiler can be
located using code like this:
JavaCompiler compiler = ServiceLoader.load(JavaCompiler.class).iterator().next();