com.google.errorprone.annotations

Annotation Type CompileTimeConstant

@Documented
 @Retention(value=CLASS)
 @Target(value=PARAMETER)
public @interface CompileTimeConstant

Annotation for method parameter declarations, which denotes that corresponding actual parameters must be compile-time constant expressions.

When the formal parameter of a method or constructor is annotated with the CompileTimeConstant type annotation, the corresponding actual parameter must be an expression that satisfies one of the following conditions:

1. The expression is one for which the Java compiler can determine a constant value at compile time, or
2. the expression consists of the literal null, or
3. the expression consists of a single identifier, where the identifier is a formal method parameter that is declared final and has the CompileTimeConstant annotation.

This constraint on call sites of methods or constructors that have one or more formal parameters with this annotation is enforced by error-prone.

For example, the following code snippet is legal:

 public class C {
   private static final S = "Hello";
   void m(@CompileTimeConstant final String s) { }
   void n(@CompileTimeConstant final String t) {
     m(S + " World!");
     m(null);
     m(t);
   }
 }
 

In contrast, the following is illegal:

 public class C {
   void m(@CompileTimeConstant final String s) { }
   void n(String t) {
     m(t);
   }
 }
 

Compile-time constant values are implicitly under the control of the trust domain of the application whose source code they are part of. Hence, this annotation is useful to constrain the use of APIs that may only be safely called with values that are under application control.

The current implementation of the @CompileTimeConstant checker cannot reason about more complex scenarios, for example, returning compile-time-constant values from a method, or storing compile-time-constant values in a collection. APIs will typically accommodate such use cases via domain-specific types that capture domain-specific aspects of trustworthiness that arise from values being under application control.