[JSR308] Re: Backward compatibility for ElementType meta-annotations

[Bill Pugh]

It is a little more complicated than that. JSR-305 will be defining  
meta-annotations that allow anyone to define their own type qualifier  
annotations. Thus, even if Java 7 updates the annotations defined by  
JSR-305, there will (hopefully) be third-party type qualifier  
annotations that won't get updated, and that may have to be portable  
across Java 5, 6 and 7 versions.

But, I'm not sure this is a big issue. What does the disambiguation  
actually effect? What happens if you have an annotation that can be  
applied to either a TYPE or a METHOD applied to a method. So long as  
JSR-308 doesn't barf and complain that it is ambiguous, I don't think  
it will be a problem.

Bill



On Jul 16, 2007, at 6:40 PM, Michael Ernst wrote:

> Bill-
>
>> The document suggests (Section 3.3) that we can use ElementType
>> declarations to disambiguate whether an annotation applies to a
>> method or a return value.
>>
>> However, this is not compatible with pre-JSR308 usage, and won't be
>> compatible with JSR305.
>
> JSR 308 could include new versions of the JSR 305 annotations; the new
> versions would have JSR-308-compatible meta-annotations.  (For  
> example, the
> new version of NonNull would have an ElementType.TYPE meta- 
> annotation.)
> Users of a JSR 308 compiler will have the new version first on their
> classpath, and users of a non-JSR-308-aware tool will use the old  
> version
> of NonNull (meta-annotated with ElementType.METHOD).
>
> I think this permits re-use of the same syntax without rewriting  
> source
> code in order to upgrade to JSR 308 or Java 7, but let me know if I am
> missing something.  (I have some other ideas if this doesn't work.)
>
>                     -Mike
>
> PS: Sorry for the delay in answering these emails; I've been  
> traveling and
> have fallen behind on email.