Automatic Processor Options

Annotation processor options are configured in the Annotation Processing preference dialog. Certain options are automatically provided to the processors (for Java 5 processors; entering them in this dialog will have no effect, since the automatically provided values will override any values set here), or provided to the processors as variables (for Java 6 processors, see details below). The automatic options include the following:

-classpath

The compiler classpath. All entries are absolute paths, not workspace-relative.

-sourcepath

The compiler source path. All entries are absolute paths, not workspace-relative.

-d

The absolute path of the compiler binary output directory, into which .class files are built.

-s

The absolute path of the generated source directory, into which annotation processors will generate files.

-source

The compiler -source option. Typically a string such as "5.0".

-target

The compiler -target option. Typically a string such as "5.0".

phase

The string RECONCILE, BUILD, or OTHER, depending on whether the processor has been called during editing, during a build, or outside the context of compilation, respectively. This option is only provided when running in the Eclipse IDE.

Except for phase, there are no automatically provided options for processors using the Java 6 annotation processing API, where JavaFileManager methods provide similar functionality. However, the values of the automatic options are made available to Java 6 processors as variables like %classpath% or %sourcepath% when setting up processor options.