In the code we should annotate all parameters of methods and constructors with the @Nullable or @NonNull
annotations. Next to this all methods that define a return value should be annotated by one of the 2 annotations. This
is done to make the code more readable and to avoid null pointer exceptions.
We use edu.umd.cs.findbugs.annotations.Nullable and edu.umd.cs.findbugs.annotations.NonNull annotations. Maybe we
will create our own annotations in the future but for now only the 2 annotations from the findbugs library must be used.
This has been decided based on an analysis of the most used annotations in the open source
community (hashgraph#4234).
In IntelliJ IDEA you can enable the null annotations support by activating the @Notnull/@Nullable problemsInspections.
Next to this the Configure Annotations button in the compiler section of the settings let you define exactly the 2
given annotations.
The module-info.java file should contain the following line:
requires static edu.umd.cs.findbugs.annotations;