Unified Compile-Time and Runtime Java Annotation Processing

Abstract

Abstract-Java provides two different options for processing source code annotations. One of them is the annotation processing API used in compile time, and the other is the Reflection API used in runtime. Both options provide different API for accessing program metamodel. In this paper, we examine the differences between those representations and we discuss options on how to unify these models along with advantages and disadvantages of this approach. Based on this proposal, we design a unified Java language model and present a prototype tool which can populate a unified model during both compilation and runtime. The paper includes the designed API of this unified language model. To verify our approach, we have performed experiments to show the usability of the unified metamodel.

Language composition using source code annotations

“…These can be used to find out whether there is a particular annotation annotating the chosen program element and then act upon it. Although the JSR 269 annotation processor API and reflection API are not the same, in [34] we have shown a unified API bridging those two.…”