SpringSource/spring-amqp — comment on commit 2cfe2f75e9a1e8fc8654d7095caa5b0563aebee4
File: spring-amqp-core/src/main/java/org/springframework/amqp/core/AcknowledgeMode.java line 28
By dsyer:

Not quite. Sorry for the confusion. AMQP has a notion of auto-ack that doesn't correspond very well to the behaviour of AUTO (which in turn is inspired by Spring JMS support), and that's what this flag is for - it means the broker assumes an ack without the consumer having to do anything, whereas AUTO means that the consumer will send an ack without the user having to do anything.