An annotation processing tool framework will {@linkplain Processor#init provide an annotation processor with an objectimplementing this interface} so the processor can use facilitiesprovided by the framework to write new files, report error messages, and find other utilities.
Third parties may wish to provide value-add wrappers around the facility objects from this interface, for example a {@code Filer}extension that allows multiple processors to coordinate writing out a single source file. To enable this, for processors running in a context where their side effects via the API could be visible to each other, the tool infrastructure must provide corresponding facility objects that are {@code .equals}, {@code Filer}s that are {@code .equals}, and so on. In addition, the tool invocation must be able to be configured such that from the perspective of the running annotation processors, at least the chosen subset of helper classes are viewed as being loaded by the same class loader. (Since the facility objects manage shared state, the implementation of a wrapper class must know whether or not the same base facility object has been wrapped before.)
@author Joseph D. Darcy
@author Scott Seligman
@author Peter von der Ahé
@since 1.6