LiteProtoToString
toString() on lite protos will not generate a useful representation of the proto from optimized builds. Consider whether using some subset of fields instead would provide useful information.

The problem

After bytecode optimization, Lite protos do not generate a meaningful #toString(). This can be acceptable for debugging, as development builds will typically not be optimized, but can pose a problem if the default lite #toString finds its way into production code as part of an important error message.

  public void validate(MyProto myProto) {
    if (!myProto.hasFrobnicator()) {
      // MyProto missing frobnicator: asf@6531767b
      throw new IllegalArgumentException("MyProto missing frobnicator: " + myProto);
    }
  }

The fix will be highly dependent on the case at hand. There may be an identifier associated with the message that would be useful to log, or even some serialized version of the entire proto.

NOTE: Logging fields of a proto will force those fields to be retained after optimization. This is not an issue if they’re already being used, but writing a comprehensive #toString method for a proto which is otherwise largely unused would increase code size.

Suppression

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