Interface Tool

Common interface for tools that can be invoked from a program. A tool is traditionally a command line program such as a compiler. The set of tools available with a platform is defined by the vendor.

Tools can be located using ServiceLoader.load(Class).

Methods

run

int run(InputStream in,
        OutputStream out,
        OutputStream err,
        String... arguments)

Run the tool with the given I/O channels and arguments. By convention a tool returns 0 for success and nonzero for errors. Any diagnostics generated will be written to either out or err in some unspecified format.

Parameters:

in - "standard" input; use System.in if null

out - "standard" output; use System.out if null

err - "standard" error; use System.err if null

arguments - arguments to pass to the tool

Returns:

0 for success; nonzero otherwise

Throws:

NullPointerException - if the array of arguments contains any null elements.

getSourceVersions

Set<SourceVersion> getSourceVersions()

Gets the source versions of the Java™ programming language supported by this tool.

Returns:

a set of supported source versions