Reflective access to a source-only annotation

Reports attempts to reflectively check for the presence of a non-runtime annotation.

Using Class.isAnnotationPresent() to test for an annotation whose retention policy is set to SOURCE or CLASS (the default) will always have a negative result. This mistake is easy to overlook.

Example:

  {
    getClass().isAnnotationPresent(SourceAnnotation.class); //always false
  }

  @Retention(RetentionPolicy.SOURCE)
  @interface SourceAnnotation {}

Locating this inspection

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ReflectionForUnavailableAnnotation

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Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | Java | Probable bugs

This inspection depends on the Java feature 'Annotations', which is available since Java 5.

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	IntelliJ IDEA 2024.2, Qodana for JVM 2024.2,
Can be installed with plugin:	Java, 242.22892

Last modified: 11 September 2024