Issue in the eclipse plugin with incrementally building and having annotations that are like 'SimpleNested' (in test.TestAnnotations)

Further examination reveals that Eclipse (3.1.0RC6) doesn't grok some of the annotations that are added by AnnotationC. If a annotation is a array of other annotations or of the complex type, eclipse's class file reader produces a ArrayOutOfBounds when reading a annotated .class file.

The reason this works for a full build is that the java builder runs to completion before the anno builder, and hence the class file loader never has to deal with annotated class files. During an incremental build, the class file loader reloads all classes that are imported and fails for class files that are annotated with a array of other annotations.

-Th

Here is a quick test:

— cut —
import org.eclipse.jdt.internal.compiler.classfmt.ClassFileReader;
public class ReaderTest {

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception

}
— cut —

Feed this a class file that was annotated with AnnoC, watch it fail if there are SimpleArray & Complex annotation types.

Is this by chance related to BP-25?

-Th

Can you attach some test case (the one you write here does not contain any @ annotation ..).

The issue is in no way tied to BP-25

You don't need any annotations in this file. This issue only surfaces if class that is referenced has annotations.

The test.reader.Target class in the backport test folder has the needed annotations.

if you drop the following file (name it Main.java)
into the backport test.reader package
— cut —
package test.reader;
public class Main {
public static void main(String[] args)

}
— cut —

and do a incremental build in eclipse 3.1, you'll see the error above.

BTW, i traced this further down: It works for Eclipse 3.0, since 3.0 doesn't support annotations in byte code yet.
This issue will surface in eclipse 3.1, since 3.1 does support JDK1.5 annotations. You can test the eclipse 3.1 internal failure as follows:

(1) create a Target.class file from test.reader.Target.java (from the backport test folder)
(2) run it thru AnnoC
(3) create the following program in eclipse 3:
— cut —
import org.eclipse.jdt.internal.compiler.classfmt.ClassFileReader;
public class ReaderTest {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception

}
— cut —

(4) feed this program the filename of the Target.class file created in (1) and (2) above.
It shows an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException while trying to read the backport annotations from the class file. This is the root cause for eclipse not being able to load the class after backport annotations have been inserted into the .class file.

-Th

thanks for the hints.
That s a shame, I just lost 5h looking for ... yet another Eclipse bug as regards Java 5 support.... Eclipse as an IDE is really a joke these days ... (last time I was stuck it was no later than with M4)

Try that (fails on 3.1 M6, perhaps fix on M7, I don't want to hear about that any more)

// file test/java5/EclipseCrap.java
package test.java5;
public class EclipseCrap {

@EclipseCrapAnnotations.NestedAnnotationArray(annArr=

)
@EclipseCrapAnnotations.NestedAnnotation(@EclipseCrapAnnotations.Simple(val="foo", s="foo"))
private String field;

}

=> says "EclipseCrapAnnotations.NestedAnnotationArray cannot be resolved as a type"
and your jdt compiler API test will blow up as well..

Have fun, or switch to IntelliJ

sorry, wrong copy paste for the 2nd file:

package test.java5;

import java.lang.annotation.Retention;
import java.lang.annotation.RetentionPolicy;

public class EclipseCrapAnnotations {

@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
static @interface NestedAnnotationArray

static @interface Simple

@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
static @interface NestedAnnotation

}

ok