Qualifiers and Scoping annotations have different semantic meanings and a single annotation should not be both a qualifier and a scoping annotation.
If an annotation is both a scoping annotation and a qualifier, unless great care is taken with its application and usage, the semantics of objects annotated with the annotation are unclear.
Take a look at this example:
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Scope
@Qualifier
@interface DayScoped {}
static class Allowance {}
static class DailyAllowance extends Allowance {}
static class Spender {
@Inject
Spender(Allowance allowance) {}
}
static class BindingModule extends AbstractModule {
...
@Provides
@DayScoped
Allowance providesAllowance() {
return new DailyAllowance();
}
}
Here, the Allowance
instance used by Spender isn’t actually scoped to a single
day, as the @Provides
method applies the DayScoped
scoping only to the
@DayScoped Allowance
. Instead, the default constructor of Allowance
is used
to create a new instance every time a Spender
is created.
If @DayScope
wasn’t a Qualifier
, the provider method would do the right
thing: the un-annotated Allowance
binding would be scoped to DayScope
,
implemented by a single DailyAllowance
instance per day.
Suppress false positives by adding the suppression annotation @SuppressWarnings("OverlappingQualifierAndScopeAnnotation")
to the enclosing element.