Java™ Platform
Standard Ed. 6

javax.tools
Interface Tool

All Known Subinterfaces:
JavaCompiler

public 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).

Since:
1.6

Method Summary
 Set<SourceVersion> getSourceVersions()
          Gets the source versions of the Java™ programming language supported by this tool.
 int run(InputStream in, OutputStream out, OutputStream err, String... arguments)
          Run the tool with the given I/O channels and arguments.
 

Method Detail

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

Java™ Platform
Standard Ed. 6

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For further API reference and developer documentation, see Java SE Developer Documentation. That documentation contains more detailed, developer-targeted descriptions, with conceptual overviews, definitions of terms, workarounds, and working code examples.

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