Sun has posted the early draft review of JSR 199, Java Compiler API. According to the draft,
The Java Compiler API is a set of interfaces that describes the functions provided by a Java Language Compiler. This API has three main objectives:
- Allow invocation of a Java compiler from a Java program using standardized interfaces.
- Interfaces enabling the compiler to report diagnostics in a structured way.
- Interfaces enabling clients of the compiler to override how source objects are found. Source objects is a common term for Java source files and Java class files.