Annotation (metadata) working...

Question

At least the @Overrides is working OK in beta-1. Pretty cool. Probably Mr. J. Bloch would update his book "Effective Java" to advise to add "@Overrides" to all methods that are intended to override a concrete method declaration in a superclass.
import java.util.*;
public class Test {
     @Overrides public boolean equals(Test that) {
          return true;
     public static int myMethod(List<?> value) {
          return value.size();
     public static void main(String[] args) {
          System.out.println (myMethod(new ArrayList<Integer>()));
}The expected compilation error (equals must have a parameter of type Object, not Test)
C>javac -source 1.5 Test.java
Test.java:4: method does not override a method from its superclass
        @Overrides public boolean equals(Test that) {
         ^

Answer 1

It requires using RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME to properties to be read reflectively. The default is "CLASS" (only present in class file), and @Overrides is "SOURCE" (only present in source file - it is a pragma or an instruction to the compiler).
import java.lang.annotation.*;
import java.lang.reflect.*;
import java.util.*;
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@interface Copyright {
     String value();
@Copyright ("�2004 edsonw") public class Test {
     @Copyright ("�2003 edsonw") @Overrides public boolean equals(Object that) {
          return true;
     @Copyright ("�2002 edsonw") public static void main(String[] args) {
          for (Annotation ann : Test.class.getAnnotations()) {
               System.out.println ("Class :" + ann);
          for (Method meth : Test.class.getMethods()) {
               for (Annotation ann : meth.getAnnotations()) {
                    System.out.println ("Method " + meth + ": " + ann);
Class :@Copyright(value=�2004 edsonw)
Method public static void Test.main(java.lang.String[]): @Copyright(value=�2002 edsonw)
Method public boolean Test.equals(java.lang.Object): @Copyright(value=�2003 edsonw)