checkers.quals
Annotation Type TypeQualifiers

@Documented
@Retention(value=RUNTIME)
@Target(value=TYPE)
public @interface TypeQualifiers

An annotation that lists the type qualifiers supported by the annotated Checker.

Example:

 @TypeQualifiers( { Nullable.class, NonNull.class } )
 public class NullnessChecker extends BaseTypeChecker { ... }
 

The checker reflectively queries this annotation, and subsequently the meta-annotations on the annotations in the list, to form the result of BaseTypeChecker.getSupportedTypeQualifiers() construct the type qualifier hierarchy. The framework also uses this annotation to determine which annotations may be added to an AnnotatedTypeMirror (an annotation may be added if and only if it is a TypeQualifier and it appears in in the list of supported annotations from TypeQualifiers).

This annotation differs from SupportedAnnotationTypes in that it simply lists the annotations that a processor (checker) recognizes -- any annotations not in the list should be ignored, but files lacking these annotations should still be processed. SupportedAnnotationTypes, on the other hand, instructs the compiler to skip processing of any file that does not contain any supported annotations. Another difference is that SupportedAnnotationTypes's argument is an array of strings, whereas TypeQualifiers's argument is an array of classes. The former supports the use of "*" for specifying multiple annotations (which is less important for TypeQualifiers than for SupportedAnnotationTypes), while the latter permits type-checking, refactoring by IDEs, etc.

See Also:

BaseTypeChecker.getSupportedTypeQualifiers()

Required Element Summary

Modifier and Type	Required Element and Description
Class<? extends Annotation>[]	value The type qualifier annotations supported by the annotated Checker.

Element Detail

value

public abstract Class<? extends Annotation>[] value

The type qualifier annotations supported by the annotated Checker. The checker may also support other, non-type-qualifier, annotations.