JGit's Nullable type was added[1] in the hope of being able to add
nullness annotations that (a) do not preclude building and running
with Java 7 and (b) could be shared by Gerrit, which uses a custom
Nullable type for other reasons[2]. Sharing a type is useful because
Eclipse's null analysis is only able to use one Nullable type at a
time in a given workspace (so for this analysis to function in a
workspace used to develop Gerrit, JGit and Gerrit would need to use
the same Nullable type).
The new Nullable type has CLASS instead of RUNTIME retention because
there wasn't any obvious use for the annotation at run time.
Gerrit uses the Nullable annotation to communicate with Guice. Guice
injection happens at runtime, so it needs to be able to read the
@Nullable annotations at run time[3]. Otherwise Guice produces
provisioning errors, such as
3) null returned by binding at com.google.gerrit.lucene.LuceneChangeIndex$Factory.create()
but parameter 7 of com.google.gerrit.lucene.LuceneChangeIndex.<init>() is not @Nullable
Switch to RUNTIME retention to avoid this.
While at it, update the javadoc to explain more clearly how this
annotation relates to other Nullable types[4]. This should make it
clearer why JGit needed another Nullable type:
A. Avoiding dependency on Java 8
B. RUNTIME retention to allow Guice to read the annotation at run time
C. Named Nullable so Guice can recognize the annotation
D. Not an addition to Java EE's javax.annotation package, to avoid
the split-package problem[2] that prevents the annotation from
being readable at run time when loaded from an OSGi container
E. Avoiding heavyweight dependencies, deprecated dependencies, and
dependencies on package internals
org.checkerframework.checker.nullness.qual.Nullable: A
com.sun.istack.internal.Nullable: B, E
*.CheckForNull, *.NullAllowed, etc: C
edu.umd.cs.findbugs.annotations.Nullable: B, E
javax.annotation.Nullable: D
org.eclipse.jdt.annotation.Nullable: B
org.jetbrains.annotations.Nullable: B
org.jmlspecs.annotation.Nullable: E
android.annotation.Nullable, android.support.annotation.Nullable: E
[1] https://git.eclipse.org/r/59993
[2] https://gerrit-review.googlesource.com/50112
[3] https://github.com/google/guice/blob/master/core/src/com/google/inject/internal/Nullability.java
[4] https://github.com/typetools/checker-framework/blob/5832a01f1/checker/src/org/checkerframework/checker/nullness/NullnessAnnotatedTypeFactory.java#L118http://types.cs.washington.edu/checker-framework/current/checker-framework-manual.html#nullness-related-work
Change-Id: I6c482653d2b53e3509abb11211b67fc29cf2949c
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Nieder <jrn@google.com>
Jonathan Nieder
e12482deed