Sun's 2005.2.1 submitted JSR 269, for support for annotation processing (this JSR will define APIs to allow annotation processors to be created using a standard pluggable API at compile time. This will simplify the task of creating annotation processors and Will Also Allow Automation of The Discovery of Appropriate Annotation Processors for a given source file.)
See you detailed:
http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=269
