Developing a java program to compile .java files

Question

I am researching for a project that will involve my project to compile simple enough java files. From my research I have decided not to try and build my own compiler as this would just take too much time.

So does anyone know what would be the best compiler to implement in this project so that I would be able to compile java files that are submitted to the program?

Answer 1

Why not use the built in Java compiler API ?

Answer 2

This almost sounds like you really need a script-y approach that does three things:

• Compile program source with proper language compiler
• Execute resulting program to produce some set of results
• Compare results to expected results to produce a grade

Since you say you want to start with Java, but move to other languages, I would suggest investigating ANT. It will do builds in many languages and can facilitate executing/grading the resulting object code.