It parses source files to build a well-designed AST with powerful analysis and transformation API. It supports modern Java versions up to Java 20. Spoon is an official Inria open-source project, and member of the OW2 open-source consortium.
The latest official documentation is available at http://spoon.gforge.inria.fr/.
Java version: Spoon version 10 and up requires Java 11 or later. Spoon 9.1.0 is the final Spoon release compatible with Java 8, and we do not plan to backport any bug fixes or features to Spoon 9. Note that Spoon can of course still consume source code for older versions of Java, but it needs JDK 11+ to run.
Get latest stable version with Maven, see https://search.maven.org/artifact/fr.inria.gforge.spoon/spoon-core
And start using it:
CtClass l = Launcher.parseClass("class A { void m() { System.out.println(\"yeah\");} }");
Documentation:
Create your first pull request to improve the documentation, see doc! Proceed with your first bug fix! The community is open-minded, respectful and patient. All external contributions are welcome.
R1) The Spoon metamodel is as close as possible to the language concepts.
R2) The Spoon model of a program is complete and sound.
R3) The text version of a Spoon model is well-formed and semantically equivalent to the original program.
R4) The analysis and transformation API is intuitive and regular.
R5) Transformation operators are designed to warn as fast as possible about invalid programs. This is done either with static type checking or with dynamic checks when the operators are used.
R6) When feasible, the text version of a Spoon model is close to the original one.
To compile Spoon, you need a Java Development Kit (JDK) and Maven:
git clone https://github.com/INRIA/spoon
cd spoon
mvn compile
To run the tests:
mvn test
Latest version: https://search.maven.org/remote_content?g=fr.inria.gforge.spoon&a=spoon-core&v=LATEST&c=jar-with-dependencies - Javadoc
Maven:
<dependency>
<groupId>fr.inria.gforge.spoon</groupId>
<artifactId>spoon-core</artifactId>
<!-- See rendered release value at http://spoon.gforge.inria.fr/ -->
<version></version>
</dependency>
Last modified 02 November 2025