AnnotationMirrorToString
AnnotationMirror#toString doesn't use fully qualified type names, prefer auto-common's AnnotationMirrors#toString

The problem

In recent versions of javac, AnnotationMirror#toString returns a string representation of the annotation that uses simple names. If the string is used in generated source code, it may require additional imports.

For example, instead of this:

@com.pkg.Foo(bar = com.pkg.Bar.class, baz = com.pkg.Baz.ONE)

javac now generates the following:

@Foo(bar = Bar.class, baz = Baz.ONE)

which may require imports for com.pkg.Foo.

auto-common’s AnnotationMirrors#toString method produces a string that uses fully qualified names for annotations, class literals, and enum constants, ensuring that source code containing that string will compile without additional imports.

TIP: AnnotationMirrors#toString may be beneficial even if the string isn’t being used in generated code, e.g. if it’s part of a diagnostic message or assertion failure message, since the fully qualified names makes it clearer which types are being referred to.

Suppression

Suppress false positives by adding the suppression annotation @SuppressWarnings("AnnotationMirrorToString") to the enclosing element.