[JSR308] Checkers - a useability problem, suggestion and idea

[Adam Warski]

Hello,

> There is, however, a problem. While it is OK that my program will have
> a static-analysis-time dependency on Sun's tree API (or even compile-
> time dependency), it can't have a run-time dependency.
>
> But it will: if I use, for example, the @NonNull annotation anywhere
> in my program (not in a comment - let's say on a method parameter),
> then when my annotated class will be loaded, the classloader will have
> to load the NonNull annotation, and then the value of the ImplicitFor
> meta-annotation, which contains a reference to Tree.Kind in Sun's tree
> API. In a non-Sun JDK this may fail.

it turns out that my understanding of how annotations are read was  
wrong; sorry for creating unneccessary confusion. Anyway, while  
loading a class, its annotations are not read. This only happens once  
you request them using reflection. So having a dependency on Sun's  
tree API in an annotation won't cause any class not found exceptions  
on a non-sun jvm. However, I still think that the public API of the  
checkers framework shouldn't depend on a specific JVM implementation.

-- 
Adam