Spring IDE's project builder

If the Spring nature is added to a project then a generic incremental builder (named "Spring Project Builder") is added to the project's list of builders (use the project's context menu item "Project > Properties > Builders" to view the whole list). This generic builder provides an extension point (named "org.springframework.ide.eclipse.core.builders") to contribute an instance of the interface org.springframework.ide.eclipse.core.project.IProjectBuilder to the Spring project's project builder.

These interface instances are called by the project builder for every Spring BeansConfig file which was modified.

The following is an excerpt from Spring IDE beans core's plugin.xml which adds the beans project validator:

   <extension
         id="beansvalidator"
         name="%beansValidator"
         point="org.springframework.ide.eclipse.core.builders">
      <run
            class="org.springframework.ide.eclipse.beans.core.internal.project.BeansProjectValidator">
      </run>
   </extension>

All of these project builders are only executed when a project is compiled / built. This happens automatically ("Project > Build Automatically" is checked) or manually ("Project > Build Automatically" is NOT checked) by selecting one of the "Project > Build XXX" menu items.

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See also: SpringProject, SpringProjectNature, BeansConfig, BeansProjectValidator