[Checkers] Flow and IGJ

[Mahmood Ali]

Greetings,

So I managed to get flow to work with IGJ.  When I experimented with  
it, I realize that it has some undesired consequences (for  
readability).  The question I have is how to deal with the qualifiers  
users specify himself.

In Nullness Checker, the following is allowed (when using Flow):
   @Nullable Date d = new Date();
   d.setDate(3);  // d guaranteed to be nonnull

When porting it to IGJ, I have the following case:
   @ReadOnly Date d = new @Mutable Date();
   d.setDate(3);  // d guaranteed to be mutable

I find it to be a bit troubling from readability standpoint and (I  
assume) would complicate the mutation rules.

In one sense they are similar (especially if a programmer reuse a  
reference for mutable and immutable object); yet I think that flow  
should only operate if the user doesn't specify a qualifier.

What do you think?

What should be the default for flow: only propagate if user doesn't  
specify qualifiers, or always propagate if the value of the variable  
is guaranteed to be a subtype of variable declaration qualifier?

- Mahmood