Show HN: Standalone Jdk.compiler, Java Compiler Framework and Tree API

69 points

3 years ago

With this standalone compiler, you can rely on all Java 11 javac features to be available, even when using newer Java versions. Specifically, this allows you to:

- compile code even if your Java environment isn't a full JDK (Java JRE, for example!)

- target Java 1.7 for compilation without any warnings or restrictions.

- use the Compiler Tree API without resorting to --add-opens trickery that may eventually fail in newer Java releases

- build a modified compiler with additional features or custom tweaks

I made this after finding that the otherwise superb "jsweet" Java-to-JavaScript transpiler failed to build and run with Java 16 or newer. Surprisingly, I couldn't find any prior work other than "proper" standalone compilers like Eclipse's ecj that would properly work with modern Java runtimes.

I'm excited to see what can be done now that we have this scaffolding.

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